That is a matter about which I trouble myself very little; let the Court be in the right or in the wrong, I like mightily the two counts its ministers.  I dined with them both some days ago at count Wurmbrand’s, an aulic counsellor, and a man of letters, who is universally esteemed here.  But the first man at this court, in point of knowledge and abilities, is certainly count Schlick, high chancellor of Bohemia, whose immense reading is accompanied with a fine taste and a solid judgment; he is a declared enemy to prince Eugene, and a warm friend to the honest hot-headed marshal Staremberg.  One of the most accomplished men I have seen at Vienna, is the young count Terracco, who accompanies the amiable prince of Portugal.  I am almost in love with them both, and wonder to see such elegant manners, and such free and generous sentiments in two young men that have hitherto seen nothing but their own country.  The count is just such a Roman-catholic as you; he succeeds greatly with the devout beauties here; his first overtures in gallantry are disguised under the luscious strains of spiritual love, that were sung formerly by the sublimely voluptuous Fenelon, and the tender madam Guion, who turned the fire of carnal love to divine objects:  thus the count begins with the spirit, and ends generally with the flesh, when he makes his addresses to holy virgins.

I MADE acquaintance yesterday with the famous poet Rousseau, who lives here under the peculiar protection of prince Eugene, by whose liberality he subsists.  He passes here for a free-thinker, and, what is still worse in my esteem, for a man whose heart does not feel the encomiums he gives to virtue and honour in his poems.  I like his odes mightily; they are much superior to the lyric productions of our English poets, few of whom have made any figure in that kind of poetry.  I don’t find that learned men abound here; there is, indeed, a prodigious number of alchymists (sic) at Vienna; the philosopher’s stone is the great object of zeal and science; and those who have more reading and capacity than the vulgar, have transported their superstition (shall I call it?) or fanaticism, from religion to chymistry (sic); and they believe in a new kind of transubstantiation, which is designed to make the laity as rich as the other kind has made the priesthood.  This pestilential passion has already ruined several great houses.  There is scarcely a man of opulence or fashion, that has not an alchymist in his service; and even the emperor is supposed to be no enemy to this folly, in secret, though he has pretended to discourage it in public.