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is he that centres his hopes at the end of such an avenue! I sit contented with the beggars of the threshold, and never propose going on, but as the gates open of themselves.

The weather here is quite sultry, and I am sorry to say one can send to the corner of the street and buy better peaches than all our expense in kitchen gardens produces. Lord and lady Dacre are a few doors from me, having started from Tunbridge more suddenly than I did from Strawberry-hill, but on a more unpleasant motive. My lord was persuaded to come and try a new physician. His faith is greater than mine; but, poor man! can one wonder that he is willing to believe? My lady has stood her shock, and I do not doubt will get over it.

Adieu, my t'other dear old friend! I am sorry to say I see you almost as seldom as I do Madame du Deffand. However, it is comfortable to reflect that we have not changed to each other for some five-and-thirty years, and neither you nor I haggle about naming so ancient a term. I made a visit yesterday to the abbess of Panthemont, general Oglethorpe's niece, and no chicken. I inquired after her mother, Madame de Meziers, and I thought I might to a spiritual votary to immortality venture to say, that her mother must be very old; she interrupted me tartly, and said, no, her mother had been married extremely young. Do but think of its seeming important to a saint to sink a wrinkle of her own through an iron grate! Oh! we are ridiculous animals; and if angels have any fun in them, how we must divert them.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.

Paris, Sept. 8, 1769.

T'OTHER night, at the duchess of Choiseul's at supper, the intendant of Rouen asked me, if we have roads of communication all over England and Scotland?—I suppose he thinks that in general we inhabit trackless forests and wild mountains, and that once a year a few legislators come to Paris to learn the arts of civil life, as to sow corn, plant vines, and make operas.

1 Sister of the princess de Ligne. [Ed.]

If

this letter should contrive to scramble through that desert Yorkshire, where your lordship has attempted to improve a dreary hill and uncultivated vale, you will find I remember your commands of writing from this capital of the world, whither I am come for the benefit of my country, and where I am intensely studying those laws and that beautiful frame of government, which can alone render a nation happy, great, and flourishing; where lettres de cachet soften manners, and a proper distribution of luxury and beggary ensures a common felicity. As we have a prodigious number of students in legislature of both sexes here at present, I will not anticipate their discoveries; but, as your particular friend, will communicate a rare improvement on nature, which these great philosophers have made, and which would add considerable beauties to those parts which your lordship has already recovered from the waste, and taught to look a little like a Christian country. The secret is very simple, and yet demanded the effort of a mighty genius to strike it out. It is nothing but this: Trees ought to be educated as much as men, and are strange awkward productions when not taught to hold themselves upright or bow on proper occasions. The academy de belles-lettres have even offered a prize for the man that shall recover the long-lost art of an ancient Greek, called le sieur Orphée, who instituted a dancing-school for plants, and gave a magnificent ball on the birth of the dauphin of Thrace, which was performed entirely by forest trees. In this whole kingdom there is no such thing as seeing a tree that is not well behaved. They are first stripped up and then cut down; and you would as soon meet a man with his hair about his ears as an oak or ash. As the weather is very hot now, and the soil chalk, and the dust white, I assure you it is very difficult, powdered as both are all over, to distinguish a tree from a hair-dresser. Lest this should sound like a travelling hyperbole, I must advertise your lordship, that there is little difference in their heights, for a tree of thirty years' growth being liable to be marked as royal timber the proprietors take care not to let their trees live to the age of being enlisted, but burn them, and plant others as often almost as they change their fashions. This gives an air of perpetual youth to the face of the country, and if adopted by us would realize Mr. Addison's visions, and

VOL. II.

Make our bleak rocks and barren mountains smile.

2 G

What other remarks I have made in my indefatigable search after knowledge must be reserved to a future opportunity; but as your lordship is my friend, I may venture to say without vanity to you, that Solon nor any of the ancient philosophers who travelled to Egypt in quest of religions, mysteries, laws, and fables, never sat up so late with the ladies and priests and presidents de parlement at Memphis, as I do here—and consequently were not half so well qualified as I am to new model a commonwealth. I have learned how to make remonstrances, and how to answer them. The latter, it seems, is a science much wanted in my own country 1-and yet it is as easy and obvious as their treatment of trees, and not very unlike it. It was delivered many years ago in an oracular sentence of my namesake

Odi profanum vulgus, et arceo.

You must drive away the vulgar, and you must have an hundred and fifty thousand men to drive them away with-that is all. I do not wonder the intendant of Rouen thinks we are still in a state of barbarism, when we are ignorant of the very rudiments of government.

The duke and duchess of Richmond have been here a few days, and are gone to Aubigné. I do not think him at all well, and am exceedingly concerned for it, as I know no man who has more estimable qualities. They return by the end of the month. I am fluctuating whether I shall not return with them, as they have pressed me to do, through Holland. I never was there, and could never go so agreeably; but then it would protract my absence three weeks, and I am impatient to be in my own cave, notwithstanding the wisdom I imbibe every day. But one cannot sacrifice one's self wholly to the public: Titus and Wilkes have now and then lost a day. Adieu, my dear lord! Be assured that I shall not disdain yours and lady Strafford's conversation, though you have nothing but the goodness of your hearts, and the simplicity of your manners, to recommend you to the more enlightened understanding of

Your old friend.

Alluding to the number of remonstrances under the name of petitions, which were presented this year from the livery of London and many other corporate bodies, on the subject of the Middlesex election. [Or.]

To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq.

Paris, Sunday night, Sept. 17, 1769.

I AM heartily tired; but, as it is too early to go to bed, I must tell you how agreeably I have passed the day. I wished for you; the same scenes strike us both, and the same kind of visions has amused us both ever since we were born.

Well then I went this morning to Versailles with my niece Mrs. Cholmondeley, Mrs. Hart, lady Denbigh's sister, and the count de Grave, one of the most amiable, humane, and obliging men alive. Our first object was to see Madame du Barri. Being too early for mass, we saw the dauphin and his brothers at dinner. The eldest is the picture of the duke of Grafton, except that he is more fair, and will be taller. He has a sickly air, and no grace. The count de Provence has a very pleasing countenance, with an air of more sense than the count d'Artois, the genius of the family. They already tell as many bon mots of the latter as of Henri quatre and Louis quatorze. He is very fat, and the most like his grandfather of all the children. You may imagine this royal mess did not occupy us long: thence to the chapel, where a first row in the balconies was kept for us. Madame du Barri' arrived over against us below, without rouge, without powder, and indeed sans avoir fait sa toilette; an odd appear

1 Madame du Barri, the celebrated mistress of Louis XV., was born in the lowest rank of society and brought up in the most depraved habits, being known only by the name which her beauty had acquired for her, mademoiselle L'Ange. She became the mistress of Le comte du Barri, a gentleman belonging to a family of Toulon of no distinction, who was well known as le grand du Barri, or du Barri le Roué, and eventually the mistress of the king; and, when the influence which she exercised over her royal protector had determined him to receive her publicly at court, and a marriage was necessary to the purpose, du Barri le Roué brought forward his younger brother the comte Guillaume du Barri, who readily submitted to this prostitution of his name and family. A third brother, when the family were enjoying the sunshine of court favour, married a daughter of the comte de Fumel, and assumed the name of comte d'Argicour. They had two sisters, who remained unmarried.

The vicomte Alphonse du Barri, who married the beautiful mademoiselle de Tournon, a relation of the prince de Soubise, and was afterwards killed at Bath by comte Rice, an Irishman, was a son of the Roué. [Ed.]

ance, as she was so conspicuous, close to the altar, and amidst both court and people. She is pretty, when you consider her; yet so little striking, that I never should have asked who she was. There is nothing bold, assuming, or affected in her manner. Her husband's sister was along with her. In the tribune above, surrounded by prelates, was the amorous and still handsome king. One could not help smiling at the mixture of piety, pomp, and carnality. From chapel we went to the dinner of the elder Mesdames. We were almost stifled in the antichamber, where their dishes were heating over charcoal, and where we could not stir for the press. When the doors are opened every body rushes in, princes of the blood, cordons bleus, abbés, housemaids, and the Lord knows who and what. Yet, so used are their highnesses to this trade, that they eat as comfortably and heartily as you or I could do in our own parlours.

Our second act was much more agreeable. We quitted the court and a reigning mistress, for a dead one and a cloister. In short, I had obtained leave from the bishop of Chartres to enter into St. Cyr; and, as Madame du Deffand never leaves any thing undone that can give me satisfaction, she had written to the abbess to desire I might see every thing that could be seen there. The bishop's order was to admit me, Monsieur de Grave et les dames de ma compagnie: I begged the abbess to give me back the order, that I might deposit it in the archives of Strawberry, and she complied instantly. Every door flew open to us: and the nuns vied in attentions to please us. The first thing I desired to see was madame de Maintenon's apartment. It consists of two small rooms, a library, and a very small chamber, the same in which the czar saw her, and in which she died. The bed is taken away, and the room covered now with bad pictures of the royal family, which destroys the gravity and simplicity. It is wainscotted with oak, with plain chairs of the same, covered with dark blue damask. Every where else the chairs are of blue cloth. The simplicity and extreme neatness of the whole house, which is vast, are very remarkable. A large apartment above, (for that I have mentioned is on the ground floor) consisting of five rooms, and destined by Louis quatorze for madame de Maintenon, is now the infirmary, with neat white linen beds, and decorated with every text of scripture, by which could be

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