In their dress and equipages they are grown very simple.  We English are living upon their old gods and goddesses; I roll about in a chariot decorated with cupids, and look like the grandfather of Adonis.

Of their parliaments and clergy I hear a good deal, and attend very little:  I cannot take up any history in the middle, and was too sick of politics at home to enter into them here.  In short, I have done with the world, and live in it rather than in a desert, like you.  Few men can bear absolute retirement, and we English worst of all.  We grow so humorsome, so obstinate and capricious, and so prejudiced, that it requires a fund of good-nature like yours not to grow morose.  Company keeps our rind from growing too coarse and rough; and though at my return I design not to mix in public, I do not intend to be quite a recluse.  My absence will put it in my power to take up or drop as much as I please.  Adieu!  I shall inquire about your commission of books, but having been arrived but ten days, have not yet had time.  Need I say?—­no I need not—­that nobody can be more affectionately yours than, &c.

HIS PRESENTATION AT COURT—­ILLNESS OF THE DAUPHIN—­DESCRIPTION OF HIS THREE SONS.

TO JOHN CHUTE, ESQ.

PARIS, Oct. 3, 1765.

I don’t know where you are, nor when I am likely to hear of you.  I write at random, and, as I talk, the first thing that comes into my pen.

I am, as you certainly conclude, much more amused than pleased.  At a certain time of life, sights and new objects may entertain one, but new people cannot find any place in one’s affection.  New faces with some name or other belonging to them, catch my attention for a minute—­I cannot say many preserve it.  Five or six of the women that I have seen already are very sensible.  The men are in general much inferior, and not even agreeable.  They sent us their best, I believe, at first, the Duc de Nivernois.  Their authors, who by the way are everywhere, are worse than their own writings, which I don’t mean as a compliment to either.  In general, the style of conversation is solemn, pedantic, and seldom animated, but by a dispute.  I was expressing my aversion to disputes:  Mr. Hume, who very gratefully admires the tone of Paris, having never known any other tone, said with great surprise, “Why, what do you like, if you hate both disputes and whisk?”

What strikes me the most upon the whole is, the total difference of manners between them and us, from the greatest object to the least.  There is not the smallest similitude in the twenty-four hours.  It is obvious in every trifle.  Servants carry their lady’s train, and put her into her coach with their hat on.  They walk about the streets in the rain with umbrellas to avoid putting on their hats; driving themselves in open chaises in the country without hats, in the rain too, and yet often wear them in a chariot in Paris when it does not rain.  The very footmen are powdered from the break of day,