I doubt much if, upon the whole, the morals of the English women are not superior to those of the French; but however the question may be decided as to morals, I believe their superiority in decency of manners is indisputable—­and this superiority is, perhaps, more conspicuous in women of a certain age, than in the younger part of the sex.  We have a sort of national regard for propriety, which deters a female from lingering on the confines of gallantry, when age has warned her to withdraw; and an old woman that should take a passionate and exclusive interest about a young man not related to her, would become at least an object of ridicule, if not of censure:—­yet in France nothing is more common; every old woman appropriates some youthful dangler, and, what is extraordinary, his attentions are not distinguishable from those he would pay to a younger object.—­I should remark, however, as some apology for these juvenile gallants, that there are very few of what we call Tabbies in France; that is, females of severe principles and contracted features, in whose apparel every pin has its destination with mathematical exactness, who are the very watch-towers of a neighbourhood, and who give the alarm on the first appearance of incipient frailty.  Here, antique dowagers and faded spinsters are all gay, laughing, rouged, and indulgent—­so that ’bating the subtraction of teeth and addition of wrinkles, the disparity between one score and four is not so great: 

               “Gay rainbow silks their mellow charms enfold,
                Nought of these beauties but themselves is old.”

I know if I venture to add a word in defence of Tabbyhood, I shall be engaged in a war with yourself and all our young acquaintance; yet in this age, which so liberally “softens, and blends, and weakens, and dilutes” away all distinctions, I own I am not without some partiality for strong lines of demarcation; and, perhaps, when fifty retrogrades into fifteen, it makes a worse confusion in society than the toe of the peasant treading on the heel of the courtier.—­But, adieu:  I am not gay, though I trifle.  I have learnt something by my residence in France, and can be, as you see, frivolous under circumstances that ought to make me grave.—­Yours.

Peronne, August 29, 1793.

The political horizon of France threatens nothing but tempests.  If we are still tranquil here, it is only because the storm is retarded, and, far from deeming ourselves secure from its violence, we suffer in apprehension almost as much as at other places is suffered in reality.  An hundred and fifty people have been arrested at Amiens in one night, and numbers of the gentry in the neighbouring towns have shared the same fate.  This measure, which I understand is general throughout the republic, has occasioned great alarms, and is beheld by the mass of the people themselves with regret.  In some towns, the Bourgeois have petitions to the Representatives on mission in behalf of their gentry thus imprisoned:  but, far from succeeding, all who have signed such petitions are menaced and intimidated, and the terror is so much increased, that I doubt if even this slight effort will be repeated any where.