TO HORACE WALPOLE

Burnham, September, 1737. I have at the distance of half a mile through a green lane a forest all my own, for I spy no human thing in it but myself.  It is a little chaos of mountains and precipices; mountains, it is true, that do not ascend much above the clouds, nor are the declivities quite so amazing as Dover cliff; but just such hills as people who love their necks as well as I do may venture to climb, and crags that give the eye as much pleasure as if they were more dangerous.  Both vale and hill are covered with most venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that, like most other ancient people, are always dreaming out their old stories to the winds.  At the foot of one of these squat I, “Il penseroso,” and there grow to the trunk for a whole morning.  The timorous hare and sportive squirrel gambol around me like Adam in Paradise, before he had an Eve; but I do not think he read Virgil, as I commonly do there.

II.—­Travels with Horace Walpole

TO HIS MOTHER

Amiens, April, 1739. We left Dover at noon, and with a pretty brisk gale reached Calais by five.  This is an exceeding old, but very pretty town, and we hardly saw anything there that was not so new and so different from England that it surprised us agreeably.  We went the next morning to the great church, and were at high mass, it being Easter Monday.  In the afternoon we took a post-chaise for Boulogne, which was only eighteen miles further.

This chaise is a strange sort of conveyance, resembling an ill-shaped chariot, only with the door opening before, instead of the side; three horses draw it, one between the shafts, and the other two on each side, on one of which the postillion rides and drives, too.  This vehicle will, upon occasion, go fourscore miles a day; but Mr. Walpole, being in no hurry, chooses to make easy journeys of it, and we go about six miles an hour.  They are no very graceful steeds, but they go well, and through roads which they say are bad for France, but to me they seem gravel walks and bowling greens.  In short, it would be the finest travelling in the world were it not for the inns, which are most terrible places indeed.

The country we have passed through hitherto has been flat, open, but agreeably diversified with villages, fields well cultivated, and little rivers.  On every hillock is a windmill, a crucifix, or a Virgin Mary dressed in flowers and a sarcenet robe; one sees not many people or carriages on the road; now and then, indeed, you meet a strolling friar, a countryman, or a woman riding astride on a little ass, with short petticoats and a great headdress of blue wool.

TO THOMAS ASHTON

Paris, April, 1739. Here there are infinite swarms of inhabitants and more coaches than men.  The women in general dress in sacs, flat hoops of five yards wide, nosegays of artificial flowers on one shoulder, and faces dyed in scarlet up to the eyes.  The men in bags, roll-ups, muffs, and solitaires.