as those poor plains have in my idea.  At first I was contented with tending a visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name to the echo of the cascade under the bridge.  How happy should I have been to have had a kingdom only for the pleasure of being driven from it, and living disguised in an humble vale!  As I got further into Virgil and Clelia, I found myself transported from Arcadia to the garden of Italy; and saw Windsor Castle in no other view than the Capitoli immobile saxum.  I wish a committee of the House of Commons may ever seem to be the senate; or a bill appear half so agreeable as a billet-doux.  You see how deep you have carried me into old stories; I write of them with pleasure, but shall talk of them with more to you.  I can’t say I am sorry I was never quite a schoolboy:  an expedition against bargemen, or a match at cricket, may be very pretty things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things that are very near as pretty.  The beginning of my Roman history was spent in the asylum, or conversing in Egeria’s hallowed grove; not in thumping and pummelling king Amulius’s herdsmen.  I was sometimes troubled with a rough creature or two from the plough; one, that one should have thought, had worked with his head, as well as his hands, they were both so callous.  One of the most agreeable circumstances I can recollect is the Triumvirate, composed of yourself, Charles, and

Your sincere friend.

WISH TO TRAVEL—­SUPERIORITY OF FRENCH MANNERS TO ENGLISH IN THEIR MANNER TO LADIES.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

KING’S COLLEGE, March 20, 1737.

Dear George,—­The first paragraph in my letter must be in answer to the last in yours; though I should be glad to make you the return you ask, by waiting on you myself.  ’Tis not in my power, from more circumstances than one, which are needless to tell you, to accompany you and Lord Conway to Italy:  you add to the pleasure it would give me, by asking it so kindly.  You I am infinitely obliged to, as I was capable, my dear George, of making you forget for a minute that you don’t propose stirring from the dear place you are now in.  Poppies indeed are the chief flowers in love nosegays, but they seldom bend towards the lady; at least not till the other flowers have been gathered.  Prince Volscius’s boots were made of love-leather, and honour leather; instead of honour, some people’s are made of friendship:  but since you have been so good to me as to draw on this, I can almost believe you are equipped for travelling farther than Rheims.  ’Tis no little inducement to make me wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left off there; that you may be polite, and not be thought awkward for it.  You know the pretty men of the age in England use the women with no more deference than they do their coach-horses, and have not half the regard for them that they have for themselves.  The little freedoms you tell me you use take off from formality, by avoiding which ridiculous extreme we are dwindled into the other barbarous one, rusticity.  If you had been at Paris, I should have inquired about the new Spanish ambassadress, who, by the accounts we have thence, at her first audience of the queen, sat down with her at a distance that suited respect and conversation.