signaliz'd himself by some small feats of chivalry in the Cour d'amour, and had dress'd himself out to the idea of tilts and tournaments ever since-the Marquis de B**** wish'd to have it thought the affair was somewhere else than in his brain. "He could like to take a trip to England," and ask'd much of the English ladies. Stay where you are, I beseech you, Mons. le Marquis, said I Les Messrs. Anglois can scarce get a kind look from them as it isThe Marquis invited me to supper.

Mons. P**** the farmer-general was just as inquisitive about our taxes.-They were very considerable, he heard If we knew but how to collect them, said I, making him a low bow.

I could never have been invited to Mons. P****'s concerts upon any other terms.

I had been misrepresented to Madame de Q*** as an esprit- -Madame de Q*** was an esprit herself: she burnt with impatience to see me, and hear me talk. I had not taken my seat, before I saw she did not care a sous whether I had any wit or no-I was let in, to be convinced she had.I call Heaven to witness I never once open'd the door of my lips.

Madame de V*** vow'd to every creature "She had never had a more improving conversation with a man in her life."

she met,

There are three epochas in the empire of a French woman-She is coquette-then deist-then devote: the empire during these is never lostshe only changes her subjects: when thirty-five years and more have unpeopled her dominions of the slaves of love, she repeoples it with slaves of infidelity— and then with the slaves of the church.

Madame de V*** was vibrating betwixt the first of these epochas: the colour of the rose was fading fast away-she ought to have been a deist five years before the time I had the honour to pay my first visit.

She placed me upon the same sopha with her, for the sake of disputing the point of religion more closely-In short Madame de V*** told me she believed nothing.

I told Madame de V*** it might be her principle; but I was sure it could not be her interest to level the outworks, without which I could not conceive how such a citadel as her's could be defended—that there was not a more dangerous thing in the world than for a beauty to be a deist-that it was a debt I owed my creed, not to conceal it from her—that I had not been five minutes sat upon the sopha beside her, but I had begun to form designs-and what is it but the sentiments of religion, and the persuasion they had excited in her

breast, which could have check'd them as they rose up?

We are not adamant, said I, taking hold of her hand-and there is need of all restraints, till age in her own time steals in and lays them on us— but, my dear lady, said I, kissing her hand

'tis

I declare I had the credit all over Paris of unperverting Madame de V***. -She affirmed to Mons. D*** and the Abbe M***, that in one halfhour I had said more for revealed religion than all their Encyclopedia had said against it-I was lifted directly into Madame de V****s Coterie-and she put off the epocha of deism for two years.

I remember it was in this Coterie, in the middle of a discourse, in which I was shewing the necessity of a first cause, that the young Count de Faineant took me by the hand to the farthest corner of the room to tell me my solitaire was pinn'd too straight about my neck-It should be plus badinant, said the Count, looking down upon his own

a word, Mons. Yorick, to the wise—

-but

And from the wise, Mons. le Count,

replied I, making him a bow—is enough.

The Count de Faineant embraced me with

more ardour than ever I was embraced by mortal

man.

For three weeks together, I was of every man's opinion I met— -Pardi! ce Mons. Yorick a autant d'esprit que nous autres. -Il raisonne bien, said another- C'est un bon enfant, said a third, And at this price I could have eaten and drank and been merry all the days of my life at Paris; but 'twas a dishonest reckoning-I grew ashamed of it. It was the gain of a slave-every sentiment of honour revolted against it- -the higher I got, the more was I forced upon my beggarly system-the better the Coterie- -the more children of Art-I languish'd for those of Nature: and one night, after a most vile prostitution of myself to half a dozen different people, I grew sick-went to bed-order'd La Fleur to get me horses in the morning to set out for Italy.

I

MARIA

MOULINES

NEVER felt what the distress of plenty was in any one shape till now-to travel it through the Bourbonnois, the sweetest part of France— in the hey-day of the vintage, when Nature is pouring her abundance into every one's lap, and every eye is lifted up a journey through each step of which Music beats time to Labour, and all her children

are rejoicing as they carry in their clusters—to pass through this with my affections flying out, and kindling at every group before me—and every one of them was pregnant with adventures.

Just Heaven!-it would fill up twenty volumes and alas! I have but a few small pages left of this to crowd it into-and half of these must be taken up with the poor Maria my friend Mr. Shandy met with near Moulines.

The story he had told of that disorder'd maid affected me not a little in the reading; but when I got within the neighbourhood where she lived, it returned so strong into my mind, that I could not resist an impulse which prompted me to go half a league out of the road, to the village where her parents dwelt, to enquire after her.

'Tis going, I own, like the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, in quest of melancholy ad-but I know not how it is, but I am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within me, as when I am entangled in them.

ventures

The old mother came to the door, her looks told me the story before she open'd her mouth --She had lost her husband; he had died, she said, of anguish, for the loss of Maria's senses, about a month before. -She had feared at first, she added, that it would have plunder'd her poor girl of what