PARIS.

looked back coolly, and told him he was welcome, if he could reach it.

An injury, sharpened by an insult, be it to whom it will, makes every man of sentiment a party-I could have leaped out of the box to have redressed it-The old French officer did it with much less confusion: for leaning a little over, and nodding to a centinel, and pointing at the same time with his finger to the distress, the centinel made way up to it. There was no occasion to tell the grievance the thing told itself -so thrusting back the German instantly with his musket-he took the poor dwarf by the hand, and placed him before him.-This is noble! said I, clapping my hands together--And yet you would not permit this, said the old officer, in England. -In England, dear Sir, said I, we sit all at

our ease.

The old French officer would have set me at unity with myself, in case I had been at variance -by saying it was a bon mot-and as a bon mot is always worth something at Paris, he offered me a pinch of snuff.

THE PICK-POCKET.

THE ROSE.

PARIS.

Ir was now my turn to ask the old French officer "What was the matter?" for a cry of "Haussez les mains, Monsieur l'Abbé," reechoed from a dozen different parts of the parterre, was as unintelligible to me, as my apostrophe to the monk had been to him.

He told me it was some poor Abbé in one of the upper loges, who he supposed had got planted perdu behind a couple of Grissets in order to see the opera, and that the parterre espying him, were insisting upon his holding up both his hands during the representation-And can it be supposed, said I, that an ecclesiastic would pick the Grissets' pockets?-The old French officer smiled, and, whispering in my ear, opened a door of knowledge which I had no idea of

Good God! said I, turning pale with astonishment is it possible that a people so smit with sentiment, should at the same time be so unclean, and so unlike themselves-Quelle grossiertė! added I.

The French officer told me it was an illiberal sarcasm at the church, which had begun in the

PARIS.

theatre about the time Tartuffe was given in it by Moliere-but, like other remains of Gothic manners, was declining-Every nation, continued he, have their refinements and grossiertes, in which they take the lead, and lose it of one another by turns-that he had been in most countries, but never in one where he found not some delicacies, which others seem to want: Le POUR, et le CONTRE, se trouven et chaque nation: there is a balance, said he, of good and bad every where: and nothing but the knowing it is so can emancipate one half of the world from the prepossessions which it holds against the otherthat the advantage of travel, as it regarded the sgavoir vivre, was by seeing a great deal both of men and manners; it taught us mutual toleration; and mutual toleration, concluded he, making me a bow, taught us mutual love.

The old French officer delivered this with an air of such candour and good sense, as coincided with my first favourable impressions of his character-I thought I loved the man: but I fear I mistook the object-'twas my own way of thinking-the difference was, I could not have expressed it half so well.

It is alike troublesome to hoth the rider and his beast-if the latter goes pricking up his ears, and starting all the way at every object which he never saw before-I have as little torment of

A

THE ROSE.

this kind, as any creature alive; and yet I honestly confess, that many a thing gave me pain, and that I blushed at many a word the first month, which I found inconsequent and perfectly innocent the second.

Madame de Rambouliet, after an acquaintance of about six weeks with her, had done me the honour to take me in her coach about two leagues out of town-Of all women, Madame de Rambouliet is the most correct, and I never wish to see one of more virtues and purity of heart.—In our return back, Madame de Rambouliet desired me to pull the cord-I asked her if she wanted any thing-Rien que pour pisser, said Madame de Rambouliet.

Grieve not, gentle traveller, to let Madame -de Rambouliet p-ss on. And ye, fair mystic nymphs? go each one pluck your rose, and scatter them in your path-for Madame de Rambouliet did no more-I handed Madame de Rambouliet out of the coach; and had I been the priest of the chaste CASTALIA, I could not have served at her fountain with a more respectful decorum.

A

SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

THROUGH

FRANCE AND ITALY.

THE FILLE DE CHAMBRE.

PARIS.

WHAT the old French officer had delivered upon travelling, bringing Polonius's advice to his son upon the same subject into my head-and that bringing in Hamlet; and Hamlet, the rest of Shakespeare's works, I stopped at the Quai de Conti in my return home, to purchase the whole

set.

The bookseller said, he had not a set in the world-Comment! said I; taking one up out of a set which lay upon the counter betwixt us.He said, they were sent him only to be got bound, and were to be sent back to Versailles in the morning to the Count de B****.

And does the Count de B****, said I, read Shakespear? C'est un esprit fort, replied the bookseller. He loves English books; and what is more to his honour, Monsieur, he loves the English too. You speak this so civilly, said I, that it is enough to oblige an Englishman to lay