En attandant-Vive l'amour! et vive la bagatelle! Je fuis, avec tous les fentimens les plus refpectueux et les plus tendres MADAME, tout à Vous, JAQUES ROQUE. It was but changing the Corporal into the Count-and faying nothing about mounting guard on Wednesday - and the letter was neither right nor wrong-fo to gratify the poor fellow, who flood trembling for my honour, his own, and the honour of his letter, -I took the cream gently off it, and whipping it up in my own way-I feal'd it and fent him with it to Madame de Land the next up morning we purfued our journey to Paris. PARIS. PARIS. WHEN a man can contest the point by dint of equipage, and carry on all floundering before him with half a dozen lackies and a couple of cooks-'tis very well in fuch a place as Paris- he may drive in at which end of a ftreet he will. A poor prince who is weak in cavalry, and whofe whole infantry does not exceed a fingle man, had best quit the field; and fignalize himfelf in the cabinet, if he can get up into it-I fay up into it for there is no defcending perpendicular amongst 'em with a "Me voici! mes enfans"-here I am-whatever many may think. I own my first sensations, as foon as I was left folitary and alone in my own chambre in the hôtel, were far from being so flattering as I had prefigured them. I walked up gravely to the window in my dufty black coat, and looking through the glafs faw all the world in yellow, yellow, blue, and green, running at the ring of pleasure. The old with broken lances, and in helmets which had loft their vizards—the young in armour bright which fhone like gold, beplumed with each gay feather of the caftall—all tilting at it like fascinated knights in tournaments of yore for fame and love. Alas, poor Yorick! cried I, what art thou doing here? On the very first onset of all this glittering clatter, thou art reduced to an atom --feek-feek fome winding alley, with a tourniquet at the end of it, where chariot never rolled or flambeau fhot its rays there thou mayeft folace thy foul in converse sweet with fome kind griffet of a barber's wife, and get into fuch coteries! -May I perifh! if I do, faid I, pulling out the letter which I had to prefent to Madame de R. —I'll wait upon this lady, the very firft thing I do. So I called La Fleur to go feek me a barber directly-and come back and brush my coat. THE WHEN HEN the barber came, he abfolutely refused to have any thing to do with my wig: 'twas either above or below his art: I had nothing to do, but to take one ready made of his own recommendation. -But I fear, friend! faid I, this buckle won't ftand. You may immerge it, replied he, into the ocean, and it will stand What a great scale is every thing upon in this city! thought I-The utmost stretch of an English periwig-maker's ideas could have gone no further than to have "dipped it into a pail of water"-What difference! 'tis like time to eternity. I confess I do hate all cold conceptions, as I do the puny ideas which engender them; and am generally fo ftruck with the great works of nature, that for my own part, if I could help it, I never would make a comparison less than a mountain at least. All that can be faid against the French fublime in this inftance of it, is this -that the grandeur is more in the word; and lefs in the thing. No doubt the ocean fills the mind with vaft ideas; but Paris being fo far inland, it was not likely I fhould run post a hundred miles out of it, to try the experiment -the parifian barber meant nothing.— The pail of water ftanding befides the great deep, makes certainly but a forry figure in fpeech-but 'twill be faid-it has one advantage-'tis in the next room, and the truth of the buckle may be tried in it without more ado, in a fingle moment. In honest truth, and upon a more candid revifion of the matter, The French expreffion profeffes more than it performs. I think I can see the precife and diftinguishing marks of national characters more in these nonsensical minutiae, than in the most important matters of state; where great men of all nations talk and ftalk fo much alike, that I would 1 |