house, though they have many situations perfectly fine.  But the whole people are divided into absolute sovereignties, where all the riches and magnificence are at Court, or into communities of merchants, such as Nurenburg (sic) and Frankfort, where they live always in town for the convenience of trade.  The king’s company of French comedians play here every night.  They are very well dressed, and some of them not ill actors.  His majesty dines and sups constantly in public.  The court is very numerous, and his affability and goodness make it one of the most agreeable places in the world.

Dear madam, your, &c. &c.

LET.  XVIII.

TO THE LADY R——.

Hanover, Oct. 1.  O. S. 1716.

I AM very glad, my dear lady R——­, that you have been so well pleased, as you tell me, at the report of my returning to England; though, like other pleasures, I can assure you it has no real foundation.  I hope you know me enough to take my word against any report concerning me.  ’Tis true, as to distance of place, I am much nearer to London than I was some weeks ago; but, as to the thoughts of a return, I never was farther off in my life.  I own, I could with great joy indulge the pleasing hopes of seeing you, and the very few others that share my esteem; but while Mr W——­ is determined to proceed in his design, I am determined to follow him.  I am running on upon my own affairs, that is to say, I am going to write very dully, as most people do when they write of themselves.  I will make haste to change the disagreeable subject, by telling you, that I am now got into the region of beauty.  All the women have (literally) rosy cheeks, snowy foreheads and bosoms, jet eye-brows, and scarlet lips, to which they generally add coal-black hair.  Those perfections never leave them, till the hour of their deaths, and have a very fine effect by candle light; but I could wish they were handsome with a little more variety.  They resemble one another as much as Mrs Salmon’s court of Great Britain, and are in as much danger of melting away, by too near approaching the fire, which they for that reason carefully avoid, though ’tis now such excessive cold weather, that I believe they suffer extremely by that piece of self-denial.  The snow is already very deep, and the people begin to slide about in their traineaus.  This is a favourite diversion all over Germany.  They are little machines fixed upon a sledge, that hold a lady and gentleman, and are drawn by one horse.  The gentleman has the honour of driving, and they move with a prodigious swiftness.  The lady, the horse, and the traineau, are all as fine as they can be made; and when there are many of them together, ’tis a very agreeable show.  At Vienna, where all pieces of magnificence are carried to excess, there are sometimes machines of this kind, that cost five or six hundred pounds English.  The duke of Wolfenbuttle is now at this court; you know he is nearly related to our king,