I do not love disputes, and shall not argue with you about Bruce; but, if you like him, you shall not choose an author for me.  It is the most absurd, obscure, and tiresome book I know.  I shall admire if you have a clear conception about most of the persons and matters in his work; but, in fact, I do not believe you have.  Pray, can you distinguish between his cock and hen Heghes, and between A Yasouses and Ozoros? and do you firmly believe that an old man and his son were sent for and put to death, because the King had run into a thornbush, and was forced to leave his clothes behind him?  Is it your faith, that one of their Abyssinian Majesties pleaded not being able to contribute towards sending for a new Abuna, because he had spent all his money at Venice in looking-glasses?  And do you really think that Peter Paez was a Jack-of-all-trades, and built palaces and convents without assistance, and furnished them with his own hands?  You, who are a little apt to contest most assertions, must have strangely let out your credulity!(692) I could put forty questions to you as wonderful; and, for my part, could as soon credit * * * *.

I am tired of railing at French barbarity and folly.  They are more puerile now serious, than -when in the long paroxysm of gay levity.  Legislators, a senate, to neglect laws, in order to annihilate coats of arms and liveries! to pull down a King, and set up an Emperor!  They are hastening to establish the tribunal of the praetorian guards; for the sovereignty, it seems, is not to be hereditary.  One view of their F`ete of the 14th,(693) I suppose, is to draw money to Paris; and the consequence will be, that the deputies will return to the provinces drunk with independence and self-importance, and will commit fifty times more excesses, massacres, and devastations, than last year.  George Selwyn says, that Monsieur, the King’s brother, is the only man of rank from whom they cannot take a title.(694)

How franticly have the French acted, and how rationally the Americans!  But Franklin and Washington were great men.  None have appeared yet in France; and Necker has only returned to make a wretched figure!  He is become as insignificant as his King; his name is never mentioned, but now and then as disapproving something that is done.  Why then does he stay?  Does he wait to strike some great stroke, when every thing is demolished?  His glory, which consisted in being minister though a Protestant, is vanished by the destruction of popery; the honour of which, I suppose, he will scarce assume to himself.  I have vented my budget, and now good night!  I feel almost as if I could walk up to bed.

(692 Though Bruce’s work was attacked at the time by the critics with much virulence, his statements have been more or less confirmed by Salt, Burckhardt, Wit-an, Clarke, Belzoni, and other distinguished travellers.  Bruce never replied to any of his opponents; but sometimes said to his daughter, that he hoped she would live to see the time when the truth of what he had written would be established.  He lost his life in April 1794, in consequence of an accidental slip of his foot, while handing a lady down stairs to her carriage.  A second edition of his Travels was published in 1805, by Dr. Alexander Murray, from a copy which the traveller had himself prepared for the press.-E.