a good conscience, that she appeared in my partial eyes, rather an agreeable than a plain woman; but she did not omit to signify to me, that what others considered her misfortune, she considered (as it was not her fault) a happy circumstance; “if my face is plain (said she) my heart is light, and I am sure it will make as good a figure in the earth, as the fairest, and most beautiful.”  My only concern is, that I find the Prieure of this convent, either for want of more knowledge, or more money, or both, had received, as parlour boarders, some English ladies of very suspicious characters.  As the conversation of such women might interrupt, and disturb that peace and tranquillity of mind, in which I found my daughter, I told the Prieure my sentiments on that subject, not only with freedom, but with some degree of severity; and endeavoured to convince her, how very unwarrantably, if not irreligiously she acted.  An abandoned, or vicious woman, may paint the pleasures of this world in such gaudy colours, to a poor innocent Nun, so as to induce her to forget, or become less attentive to the professions she has made to the next.

It was near this town, you know, that the famous interview passed between Henry the Eighth, and Francis the First, in the year 1520; and though it lasted twenty-eight days, and was an event which produced at that time so many amusements to all present, and so much conversation throughout Europe, the inhabitants of this, town, or Calais, seem to know little of it, but that one of the bastions at Ardres is called the Bastion of the Two Kings.—­There still remains, however, in the front of one of the houses in Calais, upon an ornamented stone, cut in old letter,

=God Save the King=;

And I suppose that stone was put, where it now remains, by some loyal subject, before the King arrived, as it is in a street which leads from the gate (now stopped up) which Henry passed through.

LETTER III.

In a very few days I shall leave this town, and having procured letters of recommendation from some men of fashion, now in England, to their friends in Spain, I am determined to traverse this, and make a little tour into that kingdom; so you may expect something more from me, than merely such remarks as may be useful to you on any future tour you make in France; I mean to conduct you at least over the Pyrenean hills to Barcelona; for, though I have been two or three times before in Spain, it was early in life, and when my mind was more employed in observing the customs and manors of the birds, and beasts of the field, than of their lords and masters, and made too, on the other side of that kingdom.  Having seen as much of Paris as I desired, some years ago, I intend to pass through the provinces of Artois, Champaigne, Bourgogne, and so on to Lyons; by which route you will perceive, I