out.  It is nothing but this:  trees ought to be educated as much as men, and are strange awkward productions when not taught to hold themselves upright or bow on proper occasions.  The academy de belles-lettres have even offered a prize for the man that shall recover the long lost art of an ancient Greek, called le sieur Orph`ee, who instituted a dancing-school for plants, and gave a magnificent ball on the birth of the Dauphin of Thrace, which was performed entirely by forest-trees.  In this whole kingdom there is no such thing as seeing a tree that is not well-behaved.  They are first stripped up and then cut down; and you would as soon meet a man with his hair about his ears as an oak or ash.  As the weather is very hot now, and the soil chalk, and the dust white, I assure you it is very difficult, powdered as both are all over, to distinguish a tree from a hairdresser.  Lest this should sound like a travelling hyperbole, I must advertise your lordship, that there is little difference in their heights; for, a tree of thirty years’ growth being liable to be marked as royal timber, the proprietors take care not to let their trees live to the age of being enlisted, but burn them, and plant others as often almost as they change their fashions.  This gives an air of perpetual youth to the face of the country, and if adopted by us would realize Mr. Addison’s visions, and

“Make our bleak rocks and barren mountains smile.”

What other remarks I have made in my indefatigable search after knowledge must be reserved to a future opportunity; but as your lordship is my friend, I may venture to say without vanity to You, that Solon nor any Of the ancient philosophers who travelled to Egypt in quest of religions. mysteries, laws, and fables, never sat up so late with the ladies and priests and presidents de parlement at Memphis, as I do here—­and consequently were not half so well qualified as I am to new-model a commonwealth.  I have learned how to make remonstrances, and how to answer them.  The latter, it seems, is a science much wanted in my own country(1090)—­and yet it is as easy and obvious as their treatment of trees, and not very unlike it.  It was delivered many years ago in an oracular sentence of my namesake, “Odi profanum vulgus, et arceo.”  You must drive away the vulgar, and you must have an hundred and fifty thousand men to drive them away with—­that is all.  I do not wonder the intendant of Rouen thinks we are still in a state of barbarism, when we are ignorant of the very rudiments of government.

The Duke and Duchess of Richmond have been here a few days, and are gone to Aubign`e.  I do not think him at all well, and am exceedingly concerned for it; as I know no man who has more estimable qualities.  They return by the end of the month.  I am fluctuating whether I shall not return with them, as they have pressed me to do, through Holland.  I never was there, and could never go so agreeably; but then it