pleased there. I have neither matter nor time for more, as I have heard of an opportunity of sending this away immediately with some other letters. News do not happen here as in London; the parliaments meet, draw up a remonstrance, ask a day for presenting it, have the day named a week after, and so forth. At their rate of going on, if Methusalem was first president, he would not see the end of a single question. As your histories are somewhat more precipitate, I wait for their coming to some settlement, and then will return; but, if the old ministers are to be replaced, bastille for bastille, I think I had rather stay where I am. I am not half so much afraid of any power, as the French are of Mr. Pitt.

Adieu!

Yours most faithfully.

DEAR SIR,

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.

Paris, Feb. 28, 1766,

As you cannot, I believe, get a copy of the letter to Rousseau, and are impatient for it, I send it you; though the brevity of it will not answer your expectation. It is no answer to any of his works, and is only a laugh at his affectations. I hear he does not succeed in England, where singularities are no curiosity. Yet he must stay there, or give up all his pretensions. To quit a country where he may live at ease, and unpersecuted, will be owning that tranquillity is not what he seeks. If he again seeks persecution, who will pity him? I should think even bigots would let him alone out of contempt.

I have executed your commission in a way that I hope will please you. As you tell me you have a blue cup and saucer, and a red one, and would have them completed to six, without being all alike, I have bought one other blue, one other red, and two sprigged, in the same manner, with colours; so you will have just three pair, which seems preferable to six odd ones; and which, indeed, at nineteen livres a-piece, I think I could not have found.

I shall keep pretty near to the time I proposed returning; though I am a little tempted to wait for the appearance of

leaves. As I may never come hither again, I am disposed to see a little of their villas and gardens, though it will vex me to lose spring and lilac-tide at Strawberry. The weather has been so bad, and continues so cold, that I have not yet seen all I intend in Paris. To-day, I have been to the Plaine de Sablon, by the Bois de Boulogne, to see a horse-race, rid in person by the count Lauragais and lord Forbes. All Paris was in motion by nine o'clock this morning, and the coaches and crowds were innumerable at so novel a sight. Would you believe it, that there was an Englishman to whom it was quite as new? That Englishman was I, though I live within two miles of Hounslow; have been fifty times in my life at Newmarket, and have passed through it at the time of the races, I never before saw a complete one. I once went from Cambridge on purpose; saw the beginning, was tired, and went away. If there was to be a review in Lapland, perhaps I might see a review, too; which yet I have never seen. Lauragais was distanced at the second circuit. What added to the singularity was, that at the same instant his brother was gone to church to be married. But, as Lauragais is at variance with his father and wife, he chose this expedient to show he was not at the wedding. Adieu!

To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq.

Paris, March 3, 1766.

I WRITE because I ought, and because I have promised you I would, and because I have an opportunity by Monsieur de Lillebonne, and in spite of a better reason for being silent, which is, that I have nothing to say. People marry, die, and are promoted here, about whom neither you nor I care a straw. No, truly, and I am heartily tired of them, as you may believe when I am preparing to return. There is a man in the next room actually nailing my boxes; yet it will be the beginning of April before I am at home. I have not had so much as a cold in all this Siberian winter, and I will not venture the tempting the gout by lying in a bad inn, till the weather is warmer. I wish, too, to

1 James, sixteenth baron, father of the present lord. [Ed.]

see a few leaves out at Versailles, &c. If I stayed till August I could not see many, for there is not a tree for twenty miles, that is not hacked and hewed, till it looks like the stumps that beggars thrust into coaches to excite charity and miscarriages.

I am going this evening in search of madame Roland; I doubt we shall both miss each other's lilies and roses: she may have got some pionies in their room, but mine are replaced with

crocuses.

I love lord Harcourt for his civility to you; and I would fain see you situated under the greenwood-tree, even by a com. promise.

You may imagine I am pleased with the defeat, hisses, and mortification of George Grenville, and the more by the disappointment it has occasioned here. If you have a mind to vex them thoroughly, you must make Mr. Pitt minister. They have not forgot him, whatever we have done.

The king has suddenly been here this morning to hold a lit de justice: I don't yet know the particulars, except that it was occasioned by some bold remonstrances of the parliament on the subject of that of Bretagne. Louis told me when I waked, that the duke de Chevreuil, the governor of Paris, was just gone by in great state. I long to chat with Mr. Chute and you in the blue room at Strawberry: though I have little to write, I have a great deal to say. How do you like his new house? has he no gout? Are your cousins Cortes and Pizarro heartily mortified that they are not to roast and plunder the Americans? Is goody Carlisle disappointed at not being appointed grand inquisitor? Adieu! I will not seal this till I have seen or missed madame Roland. Yours ever.

P.S. I have been prevented going to madame Roland, and must defer giving an account of her by this letter.

TO THE RIGHT HON. LADY HERVEY.

Paris, March 10, 1766.

THERE are two points, madam, on which I must write to your ladyship, though I have been confined these three or four

days with an inflammation in my eyes. My watchings and revellings had, I doubt, heated my blood, and prepared it to receive a stroke of cold, which in truth was amply administered. We were two-and-twenty at the maréchale du Luxembourg's, and supped in a temple rather than in a hall. It is vaulted at top with gods and goddesses, and paved with marble; but the god of fire was not of the number. However, as this is neither of my points, I shall say no more of it.

I send your ladyship lady Albermarle's box, which madame Geoffrin brought to me herself yesterday. I think it very neat and charming, and it exceeds the commission but by a guinea and half. It is lined with wood between the two golds, as the price and necessary size would not admit metal enough without, to leave it of any solidity.

The other point I am indeed ashamed to mention so late. I am more guilty than even about the scissors. Lord Hertford sent me word a fortnight ago, that an ensigncy was vacant, to which he should recommend Mr. Fitzgerald. I forgot both to thank him and to acquaint your ladyship, who probably know it without my communication. I have certainly lost my memory! This is so idle and young, that I begin to fear I have acquired something of the fashionable man, which I so much. dreaded. It is to England then that I must return to recover friendship and attention? I literally wrote to lord Hertford, and forgot to thank him. Sure I did not use to be so abominanable! I cannot account for it; I am as black as ink, and must turn-methodist, to fancy that repentance can wash me white again. No, I will not; for then I may sin again, and trust to the same nostrum.

I had the honour of sending your ladyship the funeral sermon on the dauphin, and a tract to laugh at sermons :

Your bane and antidote are both before you.

The first is by the archbishop of Toulouse, who is thought the

1 Brionne de Lomenie, archbishop of Toulouse, and afterwards cardinal de Lomenie, or as he was nicknamed by the populace of Paris, Cardinal de l'Ignominie, was great nephew to madame du Deffand. The spirit of political intrigue raised him to the administration of affairs during the last struggles of the old régime, and exposed him to the contempt he deserved for aspiring to such a situation at such a moment. [Ed.]

first man of the clergy. It has some sense, no pathetic, no eloquence, and, I think, clearly no belief in his own doctrine. The latter is by the abbé Coyer, written livelily, upon a single idea; and, though I agree upon the inutility of the remedy he rejects, I have no better opinion of that he would substitute. Preaching has not failed, from the beginning of the world till to-day, not because inadequate to the disease, but because the disease is incurable. If one preached to lions and tigers, would it cure them of thirsting for blood, and sucking it when they have an opportunity? No; but when they are whelped in the Tower, and both caressed and beaten, do they turn out a jot more tame when they are grown up? So far from it, all the kindness in the world, all the attention, cannot make even a monkey (that is no beast of prey) remember a pair of scissors or an ensigncy.

Adieu, madam! and pray don't forgive me, till I have forgiven myself. I dare not close my letter with any professions; for could you believe them in one that had so much reason to think himself Your most obedient humble servant?

To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq.

Paris, March 12, 1766.

I CAN write but two lines, for I have been confined these four or five days with a violent inflammation in my eyes, and which has prevented my returning to madame Roland. I did not find her at home, but left your letter. My right eye is well again, and I have been to take air.

How can you ask leave to carry any body to Strawberry? May not you do what you please with me and mine? Does not Arlington-street comprehend Strawberry? why don't you go and

2 This pamphlet of the Abbé Coyer, which was entitled “On Preaching,” produced a great sensation in Paris at the time of its publication. Its object is to prove that those who have occupied themselves in preaching to others, ever since the world began, whether poets, priests, or philosophers, have been but a parcel of prattlers, listened to if eloquent, laughed at if dull; but who have never corrected any body: the true preacher being the government, which joins to the moral maxims which it inculcates the force of example and the power of execution. [Ed.]