itself. Mine is worn with the baseness, treachery, and mercenariness I have met with. It is suspicious, doubtful, and cooled. I consider everything round me but in the light of amusement, because if I looked at it seriously I should detest it. I laugh that I may not weep. I play with monkeys, dogs, or cats, that I may not be devoured by the beast of the Gevaudan. I converse with Mesdames de Mirepoix, Boufflers, and Luxembourg, that I may not love Madame du Deffand too much; and yet they do but make me love her the more. But don't love me, pray don't love me. Old folks are but old women, who love their last lovers as much as they did their first. I should still be liable to believe you, and I am not at all of Madame du Deffand's opinion, that one might as well be dead as not love somebody. I think one had better be dead than love anybody. Let us compromise this matter; you shall love her, since she likes to be loved, and I will be the confidant. We will do anything we can to please her. I can go no farther; I have taken the veil, and would not break my vow for the world. If you will converse with me through the grate at Strawberry Hill, I desire no better; but not a word of friendship: I feel no more than if I professed it. It is paper credit, and like all other bank bills, sure to be turned into money at last. I think you would not realize me; but how do you, or how do I know that I should be equally scrupulous? The Temple of Friendship, like the ruins in the Campo Vaccino, is reduced to a single column at Stowe. Those dear friends have hated one another till some of them are forced to love one another again; and as the cracks are soldered by hatred, perhaps that cement may hold them together. You see my opinion of friendship: it would be making you a fine present to offer you mine! ..

I think there is nothing else very new Mr. Young puns, and Dr. Gem does not; Lorenzi blunders faster than one can repeat; Voltaire writes volumes faster than they can print; and I buy china faster than I can pay for it. I am glad to hear you have been two or three times at my Lady Hervey's. By what she says of you, you may be comforted, though you miss the approbation of Madame de Valentinois. Her golden apple, though indeed after all Paris has gnawed it, is reserved for Lord Holdernesse! Adieu! Yours ever.

VISITS A WESLEY MEETING.

TO JOHN CHUTE, ESQ.

BATH, Oct. 10, 1766.

I am impatient to hear that your charity to me has not ended in the gout to yourself; all my comfort is, if you have it, that you have good Lady Brown to nurse you.

My health advances faster than my amusement. However, I have been at one opera, Mr. Wesley's. They have boys and girls with charming voices, that sing hymns, in parts, to Scotch ballad tunes; but indeed so long that one would think they were already in eternity, and knew how much time they had before them. The chapel is very neat, with true Gothic windows (yet I am not converted); but I was glad to see that luxury is creeping in upon them before persecution: they have very neat mahogany stands for branches, and brackets of the same in taste. At the upper end is a broad hautpas of four steps, advancing in the middle; at each end of the broadest part are two of my eagles, with red cushions for the parson and clerk. Behind them rise three more steps, in the midst of which is a third eagle for pulpit,-scarlet-armed chairs to all three. On either hand, a balcony for elect ladies. The rest of the congregation sit on forms. Behind the pit, in a dark

niche, is a plain table within rails, so you see the throne is for the apostle. Wesley is a lean, elderly man, fresh-colored, his hair smoothly combed, but with a soupçon of curl at the ends; wondrous clean, but as evidently an actor as Garrick. He spoke his sermon, but so fast and with so little accent that I am sure he has often uttered it, for it was like a lesson. There were parts and eloquence in it; but towards the end he exalted his voice and acted very ugly enthusiasm,― decried learning, and told stories, like Latimer, of the fool of his college, who said, "I thanks God for everything." Except a few from curiosity and some honorable women, the congregation was very mean. There was a Scotch Countess of Buchan, who is carrying a pure rosy, vulgar face to heaven, and who asked Miss Rich if that was the author of the poets. I believe she meant me and the Noble Authors.

The Bedfords came last night. Lord Chatham was with me yesterday two hours: looks and walks well, and is in excellent political spirits.

IN PARIS AGAIN WITH MADAME DU DEFFAND.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

PARIS, Sept. 7, 1769.

*

My dear old friend [Madame du Deffand] was charmed with your mention of her, and made me vow to return you a thousand compliments. She cannot conceive why you will not step hither. Feeling in herself no difference between the spirits of twenty-three and seventy-three, she thinks there is no impediment to doing whatever one will, but the want of eyesight. If she had that, I am persuaded no consideration would prevent her making me a visit at Strawberry Hill. She makes songs, sings them, remembers all that ever were made; and, having lived from the most agreeable to the most reasoning age, has all that was amiable in the last, all that is sensible in this, without the vanity of the former or the pedant impertinence of the latter. I have heard her dispute with all sorts of people on all sorts of subjects, and never knew her in the wrong. She humbles the learned, sets right their disciples, and finds conversation for everybody. Affectionate as Madame de Sévigné, she has none of her prejudices, but a more universal taste; and with the most delicate frame, her spirits hurry her through a life of fatigue that would kill me if I was to continue here. If we return by one in the morning from suppers in the country, she proposes driving to the Boulevard or to the Foire St. Ovide, because it is too early to go to bed! I had great difficulty last night to persuade her, though she was not well, not to sit up till between two and three for the comet; for which purpose she had appointed an astronomer to bring his telescopes to the president Henault's, as she thought it would amuse me. short, her goodness to me is so excessive that I feel unashamed at producing my withered person in a round of diversions which I have quitted at home. I tell a story, I do feel ashamed, anl sigh to be in my quiet castle and cottage; but it costs me many a pang when I reflect that I shall probably never have resolution enough to take another journey to see this best and sincerest of friends, who loves me as much as my mother did! But it is idle to look forward. What is next year? What is next year?-a bubble that may burst for her or me, before even the flying year can hurry to the end of its almanac ! To form plans and projects

In

in such a precarious life as this resembles the enchanted castles of fairy legends, in which every gate was guarded by giants, dragons, etc. Death or diseases bar every portal through which we mean to pass; and though we may escape them and reach the last chamber, what a wild adventurer is he that centers his hopes at the end of such an avenue! I sit contented with the beggars at 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.

LITERARY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

STRAWBERRY HILL, Oct. 16, 1769.

I arrived at my own Louvre last Wednesday night, and am now at my Versailles. Your last letter reached me but two days before I left Paris, for I have been an age at Calais and upon the sea. I could execute no commission for you, and in truth you gave me no explicit one; but I have brought you a bit of china, and beg you will be content with a little present instead of a bargain. Said china is, or will be soon, in the Customhouse; but I shall have it, I fear, long before you come to London.

I am sorry those boys got at my tragedy. I beg you would keep it under lock and key; it is not at all food for the public, - at least not till I am "food for worms, good Percy." Nay, it is not an age to encourage anybody, that has the least vanity, to step forth. There is a total extinction of all taste; our authors are vulgar, gross, illiberal; the theater swarms with wretched translations and ballad operas, and we have nothing new but improving abuse. I have blushed at Paris when the papers came over crammed with ribaldry or with Garrick's insufferable nonsense about Shakespeare. As that man's writings will be preserved by his name, who will believe that he was a. tolerable actor. Cibber wrote as bad Odes, but then Cibber wrote "The Careless Husband," and his own Life, which both deserve immortality. Garrick's prologues and epilogues are as bad as his Pindarics and Pantomimes.

I feel myself here like a swan that, after living six weeks in a nasty pool upon a common, is got back into its own Thames.

I do nothing but plume and clean myself, and enjoy the verdure and silent waves. Neatness and greenth are so essential in my opinion to the country, that in France, where I see nothing but chalk and dirty peasants, I seem in a terrestrial purgatory that is neither town nor country. The face of England is so beautiful that I do not believe Tempe or Arcadia were half so rural; for both, lying in hot climates, must have wanted the turf of our lawns. It is unfortunate to have so pastoral a taste, when I want a cane more than a crook. We are absurd creatures; at twenty I loved nothing but London.

Tell me when you shall be in town. most of my time here till after Christmas.

I think of passing
Adieu!

CHARM OF MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ'S LETTERS. THE AMERI

CAN WAR.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM MASON.

STRAWBERRY HILL, Aug. 7, 1775.

Let me tell you you have no more taste than Dr. Kenrick if you do not like Madame de Sévigné's Letters. Read them again; they are one of the very few books that, like Gray's Life, improve upon one every time one reads them. You have still less taste if you like my letters, which have nothing original; and if they have anything good, so much the worse, for it can only be from having read her letters and his. He came perfect out of the eggshell, and wrote as well at eighteen as ever he did,nay, letters better; for his natural humor was in its bloom, and not wrinkled by low spirits, dissatisfaction, or the character he had assumed. I do not care a straw whether Dr. Kenrick and Scotland can persuade England that he was no poet. There is no common sense left in this country,—

With Arts and Sciences it traveled West.

The Americans will admire him and you, and they are the only people by whom one would wish to be admired. The world is divided into two nations, - men of sense that will be free, and fools that like to be slaves. What a figure do two great empires make at this moment! Spain, mistress of Peru and Mexico, amazes Europe with an invincible armada; at last it sails to Algiers, and disbarks its whole contents, even to the provisions of the fleet. It is beaten shamefully, loses all its