despise a man who can think and act in such a manner.  However, I made a stand, and answered with not a little warmth.  The count, I said, was a man entitled to respect, alike for his character and his acquirements.  I had never met a person whose mind was stored with more useful and extensive knowledge, —­ who had, in fact, mastered such an infinite variety of subjects, and who yet retained all his activity for the details of ordinary business.  This was altogether beyond his comprehension; and I took my leave, lest my anger should be too highly excited by some new absurdity of his.

And you are to blame for all this, you who persuaded me to bend my neck to this yoke by preaching a life of activity to me.  If the man who plants vegetables, and carries his corn to town on market-days, is not more usefully employed than I am, then let me work ten years longer at the galleys to which I am now chained.

Oh, the brilliant wretchedness, the weariness, that one is doomed to witness among the silly people whom we meet in society here!  The ambition of rank!  How they watch, how they toil, to gain precedence!  What poor and contemptible passions are displayed in their utter nakedness!  We have a woman here, for example, who never ceases to entertain the company with accounts of her family and her estates.  Any stranger would consider her a silly being, whose head was turned by her pretensions to rank and property; but she is in reality even more ridiculous, the daughter of a mere magistrate’s clerk from this neighbourhood.  I cannot understand how human beings can so debase themselves.

Every day I observe more and more the folly of judging of others by ourselves; and I have so much trouble with myself, and my own heart is in such constant agitation, that I am well content to let others pursue their own course, if they only allow me the same privilege.

What provokes me most is the unhappy extent to which distinctions of rank are carried.  I know perfectly well how necessary are inequalities of condition, and I am sensible of the advantages I myself derive therefrom; but I would not have these institutions prove a barrier to the small chance of happiness which I may enjoy on this earth.

I have lately become acquainted with a Miss B—­, a very agreeable girl, who has retained her natural manners in the midst of artificial life.  Our first conversation pleased us both equally; and, at taking leave, I requested permission to visit her.  She consented in so obliging a manner, that I waited with impatience for the arrival of the happy moment.  She is not a native of this place, but resides here with her aunt.  The countenance of the old lady is not prepossessing.  I paid her much attention, addressing the greater part of my conversation to her; and, in less than half an hour, I discovered what her niece subsequently acknowledged to me, that her aged aunt, having but a small fortune, and a still