TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Paris, Feb. 4, 1766.

I WRITE on small paper, that the nothing I have to say may look like a letter. Paris, that supplies me with diversions, affords me no news. England sends me none, on which I care to talk by the post. All seems in confusion; but I have done with politics!

The marriage of your cousins puts me in mind of the two owls, whom the Vizier in some Eastern tale told the Sultan were treating on a match between their children, on whom they were to settle I don't know how many ruined villages. Trouble not your head about it. Our ancestors were rogues, and so will our posterity be.

Madame Roland has sent to me, by Lady Jerningham,1 to beg my works. She shall certainly have them when I return to England; but how comes she to forget that you and I are friends? or does she think that all Englishmen quarrel on party? If she does, methinks she is a good deal in the right, and it is one of the reasons why I have bid adieu to politics, that I may not be expected to love those I hate, and hate those I love. I supped last night with the Duchess de Choiseul, and saw a magnificent robe she is to wear to-day for a great wedding between a Biron and a Boufflers. It is of blue satin, embroidered all over in a mosaic, diamond-wise, with gold in every diamond is a silver star edged with gold, and

'Mary, eldest daughter, and eventually heiress, of Francis Plowden, Esq. by Mary, eldest daughter of the Hon. John Stafford Howard, younger son of the unfortunate Lord Stafford, wife of Sir George Jerningham.-E.

The Duc de Lauzun, who, upon the death of his uncle, the Maréchal de Biron, became Duc de Biron, married the heiress and only child of the Duc de Boufflers, who died at Genoa. The marriage proved an unhappy one, and the Duchess twice took refuge in England at the breaking out of the French revolution; but having, in 1793, unadvisedly returned to Paris, she perished on the scaffold in one of the bloody proscriptions of Robespierre. At the beginning of that revolution, the Duke espoused the popular cause, and even commanded an army under the orders of the legislative assembly; but in the storms that succeeded, being altogether unequal either to stem the torrent of popular fury or to direct its course, he fell by the guillotine early in 1794.-E.

surrounded with spangles in the same way; it is trimmed with double sables, crossed with frogs and tassels of gold; her head, neck, breast, and arms, covered with diamonds. She will be quite the fairy queen, for it is the prettiest little reasonable amiable Titania you ever saw; but Oberon does not love it. He prefers a great mortal Hermione his sister. I long to hear that you are lodged in Arlington-street, and invested with your green livery; and I love Lord Beaulieu for his cudom. Adieu!

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Paris, Sunday, Feb. 23.

I CANNOT know that you are in my house, and not say, you are welcome. Indeed you are, and I am heartily glad you are pleased there. I have neither matter nor time for more, as I have heard of an opportunity of sending this away immediately with some other letters. News do not happen here as in London; the Parliaments meet, draw up a remonstrance, ask a day for presenting it, have the day named a week after, and so forth. At their rate of going on, if Methusalem was first president, he would not see the end of a single question. As your histories are somewhat more precipitate, I wait for their coming to some settlement, and then will return; but, if the old ministers are to be replaced, bastille for bastille, I think I had rather stay where I am. I am not half so much afraid of any power, as the French are of Mr. Pitt. Adieu!

DEAR SIR,

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.

Paris, Feb. 28, 1766.

As you cannot, I believe, get a copy of the letter to Rousseau, and are impatient for it, I send it you; though the brevity of it will not answer your expectation. It is no answer to any of his works, and is only a laugh at his affecta

tions. I hear he does not succeed in England, where singularities are no curiosity. Yet he must stay there, or give up all his pretensions. To quit a country where he may live at ease, and unpersecuted, will be owning that tranquillity is not what he seeks. If he again seeks persecution, who will pity him? I should think even bigots would let him alone out of contempt.

I have executed your commission in a way that I hope will please you. As you tell me you have a blue cup and saucer, and a red one, and would have them completed to six, without being all alike, I have bought one other blue, one other red, and two sprigged, in the same manner, with colours; so you will have just three pair, which seems preferable to six odd ones; and which, indeed, at nineteen livres a-piece, I think I could not have found.

I shall keep pretty near to the time I proposed returning ; though I am a little tempted to wait for the appearance of leaves. As I may never come hither again, I am disposed to see a little of their villas and gardens, though it will vex me to lose spring and lilac-tide at Strawberry. The weather has been so bad, and continues so cold, that I have not yet seen all I intend in Paris. To-day, I have been to the Plaine de Sablon, by the Bois de Boulogne, to see a horse-race rid in person by the Count Lauragais and Lord Forbes.1 All Paris was in motion by nine o'clock this morning, and the coaches and erowds were innumerable at so novel a sight. Would you believe it, that there was an Englishman to whom it was quite as new? That Englishman was I: though I live within two miles of Hounslow, have been fifty times in my life at Newmarket, and have passed through it at the time of the races, I never before saw a complete one. I once went from Cambridge on purpose; saw the beginning, was tired, and went away. If there was to be a review in Lapland, perhaps I might see a review, too; which yet I have never seen. Lauragais was distanced at the second circuit. What added to

'James, sixteenth Baron, who married, in 1760, Catherine, only daughter of Sir Robert Innes, Bart. of Orton. He was Deputy-governor of Fort William, and died there in 1804.-E.

the singularity was, that at the same instant his brother was gone to church to be married. But, as Lauragais is at variance with his father and wife, he chose this expedient to show he was not at the wedding. Adieu!

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Paris, March 3, 1766.

I WRITE because I ought, and because I have promised you I would, and because I have an opportunity by Monsieur de Lillebonne, and in spite of a better reason for being silent, which is, that I have nothing to say. People marry, die, and are promoted here, about whom neither you nor I care a straw. No, truly, and I am heartily tired of them, as you may believe when I am preparing to return. There is a man in the next room actually nailing my boxes; yet it will be the beginning of April before I am at home. I have not had so much as a cold in all this Siberian winter, and I will not venture the tempting the gout by lying in a bad inn, till the weather is warmer. « I wish, too, to see a few leaves out at Versailles, &c. If I stayed till August I could not see many; for there is not a tree for twenty miles, that is not hacked and hewed, till it looks like the stumps that beggars thrust into coaches to excite charity and miscarriages.

I am going this evening in search of Madame Roland; I doubt we shall both miss each other's lilies and roses: she may have got some pionies in their room, but mine are replaced with crocuses.

I love Lord Harcourt for his civility to you; and I would fain see you situated under the greenwood-tree, even by a compromise. You may imagine I am pleased with the defeat, hisses, and mortification of George Grenville, and the more by the disappointment it has occasioned here. If you have a mind to vex them thoroughly, you must make Mr. Pitt minister.1 They have not forgot him, whatever we have done.

1 Mr. Gerard Hamilton, in a letter to Mr. Calcraft, of the 7th, says:—

The King has suddenly been here this morning to hold a lit de justice: I don't yet know the particulars, except that it was occasioned by some bold remonstrances of the Parliament on the subject of that of Bretagne. Louis told me when I waked, that the Duke de Chevreuil, the governor of Paris, was just gone by in great state. I long to chat with Mr. Chute and you in the blue room at Strawberry: though I have little to write, I have a great deal to say. How do you like his new house? has he no gout? Are your cousins Cortes and Pizarro heartily mortified that they are not to roast and plunder the Americans? Is Goody Carlisle disappointed at not being appointed grand inquisitor? Adieu! I will not seal this till I have seen or missed Madame Roland. Yours ever. P. S. I have been prevented going to Madame Roland, and must defer giving an account of her by this letter.

TO THE RIGHT HON. LADY HERVEY.

Paris, March 10, 1766.

THERE are two points, Madam, on which I must write to your ladyship, though I have been confined these three or four days with an inflammation in my eyes. My watchings and revellings had,, I doubt, heated my blood, and prepared it to receive a stroke of cold, which in truth was amply administered. We were two-and-twenty at the Maréchale du Luxembourg's, and supped in a temple rather than in a hall. It is vaulted at top with gods and goddesses, and paved with marble; but the god of fire was not of the number. However, as this is neither of my points, I shall say no more of it.

I send your ladyship Lady Albemarle's box, which Madame Geoffrin brought to me herself yesterday. I think it very neat and charming, and it exceeds the commission but by a guinea and half. It is lined with wood between the two

"Grenville and the Duke of Bedford's people continue to oppose, in every stage, the passage of the bill for the repeal of the Stamp-act. The reports of the day are, that Mr. Pitt will go into the House of Lords, and form an arrangement, which he will countenance."-E.