stupid. I think my letters have nothing in them, but I am sure my heart has so much, that I am vexed to find no better name for

admirer, than

your friend and

Your friend and admirer.

LETTER XX.

FROM LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.

Lyons, Sept. 28, 1718.

I RECEIVED yours here, and should thank you for the pleasure you seem to enjoy from my return; but I can hardly forbear being angry at you, for rejoicing at what displeases me so much. You will think this but an odd compliment on my side. I will assure you, it is not from insensibility of the joy of seeing my friends; but when I consider that I must, at the same time, see and hear a thousand disagreeable impertinents; that I must receive and pay visits, make curtesies, and assist at teatables, where I shall be half killed with questions; and, on the other part, that I am a creature that cannot serve any body but with insignificant good wishes; and that my presence is not a necessary good to any one member of my native country, I think I might much better have staid where ease and quiet made up the happiness of the happiness of my indolent life. I should certainly be melancholy, if I pursued this theme one line farther. I will rather fill the remainder of this paper with the inscriptions

on the tables of brass, that are placed on each side of the town-house.

I was also shewed, without the gate of St. Justinus, some remains of a Roman aqueduct; and behind the monastery of St. Mary, there are the ruins of the imperial palace, where the emperor Claudius was born, and where Severus lived. The great cathedral of St. John is a good Gothic building, and its clock much admired by the Germans. In one of the most conspicuous parts of the town, is the late king's statue set up, trampling upon mankind. I cannot forbear saying one word here of the French statues (for I never intend to mention any more of them) with their gilded full-bottomed wigs. If their king had intended to express in one image, ignorance, ill taste, and vanity, his sculptors could have made no other figure, so proper for that purpose, as this statue, which represents the odd mixture of an old beau, who had a mind to be a hero, with a bushel of curled hair on his head, and a gilt truncheon in his hand. The French have been so voluminous on the history of this town, I need say nothing of it. The houses are tolerably well built, and the Belle cour well planted, from whence is seen the celebrated joining of the Soane and Rhone.

"Ubi Rhodanus ingens amne prærapido fluit,
Ararque dubitans quo suos fluctus agat."

I have had time to see every thing with great lei

sure, having been confined several days to this town by a swelling in my throat, the remains of a fever occasioned by a cold I got in the damps of the Alps. The doctors here threaten me with all sorts of distempers, if I dare to leave them; but I, that know the obstinacy of it, think it just as possible to continue my way to Paris, with it, as to about the streets of Lyons, and am determined to pursue my journey to-morrow, in spite of doctors, apothecaries, and sore throats.

go

When you see Lady Rich, tell her I have received her letter, and will answer it from Paris, believing that the place that she would most willingly hear of. I am, &c. &c.

LETTER XXI.

FROM LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.

I HAVE been running about Paris at a strange rate with my sister, and strange sights have we seen. They are, at least, strange sights to me, for after having been accustomed to the gravity of Turks, I can scarcely look with an easy and familiar aspect at the levity and agility of the airy phantoms that are dancing about me here, and I often think that I am at a puppet-shew amidst the representations of real life. I stare prodigiously, but nobody remarks it, for every body stares here; staring is a-la-mode-there is a stare of attention and interét, a stare of curiosity, a stare of expectation, a stare

of surprize, and it would greatly amuse you to see what trifling objects excite all this staring. This staring would have rather a solemn kind of air, were it not alleviated by grinning, for at the end of a stare there comes always a grin, and very commonly the entrance of a gentleman or a lady into a room is accompanied with a grin, which is designed to express complacence and social pleasure, but really shews nothing more than a certain contortion of muscles that must make a stranger laugh really, as they laugh artificially. The French grin is equally remote from the cheerful serenity of a smile, and the cordial mirth of an honest English horse-laugh. I shall not perhaps stay here long enough to form a just idea of French manners and characters, though this I believe would require but little study, as there is no great depth in either. It appears, on a superficial view, to be a frivolous, restless, and agreeable people. The abbot is my guide, and I could not easily light upon a better; he tells me that here the women form the character of the men, and I am convinced in the persuasion of this by every company into which I enter. There seems here to be no intermediate state between infancy and manhood; for as soon as the boy has quit his leading-strings, he is set agog in the world; the ladies are his tutors, they make the first impressions, which generally remain, and they render the men ridiculous by the imitation of their humours and graces, so that dignity in manners is a rare thing here before the age of sixty.

Does not king David say somewhere, that man walketh in a vain shew? I think he does, and I am sure this is peculiarly true of the Frenchman; but he walks merrily, and seems to enjoy the vision, and may he not therefore be esteemed more happy than many of our solid thinkers, whose brows are furrowed by deep reflection, and whose wisdom is so often cloathed with a misty mantle of spleen and vapours?

What delights me most here is a view of the magnificence, often accompanied with taste, that reigns in the king's palaces and gardens; for though I do not admire much the architecture, in which there is great irregularity and want of proportion, yet the statues, paintings, and other decorations afford me high entertainment. One of the pieces of antiquity that struck me most in the gardens of Versailles, was the famous Colossean statue of Jupiter, the workmanship of Myron, which Mark Antony carried away from Samos, and Augustus ordered to be placed in the Capitol. It is of Parian marble, and though it has suffered in the ruin of time, it still preserves striking lines of majesty. But surely, if marble could feel, the God would frown with a generous indignation to see himself transported from the Capitol into a French garden; and after having received the homage of the Roman emperors, who laid their laurels at his feet when they returned from their conquests, to behold now nothing but frizzled beaus passing by him with indifference.