"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 grossièreté !” added I.

The French officer told me it was an illiberal sarcasm at the Church, which had begun in the theatre about the time the Tartuffe was given it by Molière: but, like other remains of Gothic manners, was declining. Every nation," continued he, "have their refinements and grossièretés, 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 seemed to want. Le pour et le contre se trouvent en chaque nation; there is a balance," said he, "of good and bad everywhere; and nothing but the knowing it is so, can emancipate one-half of the world from the prepossession which it holds against the other: that the advantage of travel, as it regarded the savoir 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 both 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 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 Rambouillet, 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 Rambouillet is the most correct; and I never wish to see one of more virtues and purity of heart.

I

In our return back, Madame de Rambouillet desired me to pull the cord. asked her if she wanted anything: "Rien said Madame de Rambouillet.

Grieve not, gentle traveller, to let Madame de Rambouillet . . . ; and ye, fair mystic nymphs! go each one pluck your rose, and scatter them in your path-for Madame de Rambouillet did no more.

I handed Madame de Rambouillet 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 de

corum.

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 Shakespere'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 Shakespere ?"

"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 out a louis d'or or two at your shop."

The bookseller made a bow, and was going to say something, when a young decent girl about twenty, who by her air and address seemed to be fille de chambre to some devout woman of fashion, came into the shop, and asked for "Les Egarements du Cœur et de l'Esprit:" the bookseller gave her the book directly; she pulled out a little green satin purse run round with a riband of the same colour, and putting her finger and thumb into it, she took out the money and paid for it. As I had nothing more to stay me in the shop, we both walked out at the door together.

-"And what have you to do, my dear," said I, "with 'The Wanderings of the Heart,' who scarce know yet you have one? nor, till love has first told you it, or some faithless shepherd has made it ache, canst thou ever be sure it is so."