Our modern travellers are mostly either sentimental or philosophical, or courtly or political; and I do not remember to have read any who describe the manner of living among the gentry and middle ranks of life in France.  I will, therefore, relieve your attention for a moment from our actual distresses, and give you the picture of a day as usually passed by those who have easy fortunes and no particular employment.—­The social assemblage of a whole family in the morning, as in England, is not very common, for the French do not generally breakfast:  when they do, it is without form, and on fruit, bread, wine, and water, or sometimes coffee; but tea is scarcely ever used, except by the sick.  The morning is therefore passed with little intercourse, and in extreme dishabille.  The men loiter, fiddle, work tapestry, and sometimes read, in a robe de chambre, or a jacket and "pantalons;" [Trowsers.] while the ladies, equipped only in a short manteau and petticoat, visit their birds, knit, or, more frequently, idle away the forenoon without doing any thing.  It is not customary to walk or make visits before dinner, and if by chance any one calls, he is received in the bedchamber.  At half past one or two they dine, but without altering the negligence of their apparel, and the business of the toilette does not begin till immediately after the repast.  About four, visits of ceremony begin, and may be made till six or seven according to the season; but those who intend passing an evening at any particular house, go before six, and the card parties generally finish between eight and nine.  People then adjourn to their supper engagements, which are more common than those for dinner, and are, for the most part, in different places, and considered as a separate thing from the earlier amusements of the evening.  They keep better hours than the English, most families being in bed by half past ten.  The theatres are also regulated by these sober habits, and the dramatic representations are usually over by nine.

A day passed in this manner is, as you may imagine, susceptible of much ennui, and the French are accordingly more subject to it than to any other complaint, and hold it in greatest dread than either sickness or misfortune.  They have no conception how one can remain two hours alone without being ennuye a la mort; and but few, comparatively speaking, read for amusement:  you may enter ten houses without seeing a book; and it is not to be wondered at that people, who make a point of staying at home all the morning, yet do not read, are embarrassed with the disposition of so much time.—­It is this that occasions such a general fondness for domestic animals, and so many barbarous musicians, and male-workers of tapestry and tambour.