“But he ought also to have been in the country during the hunting season, with ‘a select party of distinguished guests,’ as the papers term it.  He ought to have seen the gentlemen after dinner (on the hunting days), and the soiree ensuing thereupon,—­and the women looking as if they had hunted, or rather been hunted; and I could have wished that he had been at a dinner in town, which I recollect at Lord C——­’s—­small, but select, and composed of the most amusing people.  The dessert was hardly on the table, when, out of twelve, I counted five asleep; of that five, there were Tierney, Lord ——­, and Lord ——­ —­I forget the other two, but they were either wits or orators—­perhaps poets.

“My residence in the East and in Italy has made me somewhat indulgent of the siesta;—­but then they set regularly about it in warm countries, and perform it in solitude (or at most in a tete-a-tete with a proper companion), and retire quietly to their rooms to get out of the sun’s way for an hour or two.

“Altogether, your friend’s Journal is a very formidable production.  Alas! our dearly beloved countrymen have only discovered that they are tired, and not that they are tiresome; and I suspect that the communication of the latter unpleasant verity will not be better received than truths usually are.  I have read the whole with great attention and instruction.  I am too good a patriot to say pleasure—­at least I won’t say so, whatever I may think.  I showed it (I hope no breach of confidence) to a young Italian lady of rank, tres instruite also; and who passes, or passed, for being one of the three most celebrated belles in the district of Italy, where her family and connections resided in less troublesome times as to politics, (which is not Genoa, by the way,) and she was delighted with it, and says that she has derived a better notion of English society from it than from all Madame de Stael’s metaphysical disputations on the same subject, in her work on the Revolution.  I beg that you will thank the young philosopher, and make my compliments to Lady B. and her sister.

“Believe me your very obliged and faithful

“N.  B.

“P.S.  There is a rumour in letters of some disturbance or complot in the French Pyrenean army—­generals suspected or dismissed, and ministers of war travelling to see what’s the matter.  ’Marry (as David says), this hath an angry favour.’

“Tell Count ——­ that some of the names are not quite intelligible, especially of the clubs; he speaks of Watts—­perhaps he is right, but in my time Watiers was the Dandy Club, of which (though no dandy) I was a member, at the time too of its greatest glory, when Brummell and Mildmay, Alvanley and Pierrepoint, gave the Dandy Balls; and we (the club, that is,) got up the famous masquerade at Burlington House and Garden, for Wellington.  He does not speak of the Alfred, which was the most recherche and most tiresome of any, as I know by being a member of that too.”