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Delicious essence! how refreshing art thou to nature! how strongly are all its powers and all its weaknesses on thy side! how sweetly dost thou mix with the blood, and help it through the most difficult and tortuous passages to the heart! The poor man, as he was not straitened for time, had given it here in a larger dose it is certain he had a way of bringing it into less form, for the many sudden cases he had to do with in the streets; but how he contrived to correct, sweeten, concentre, and qualify it-I vex not my spirit with the inquiry it is enough, the beggar gained two twelve-sous pieces and they can best tell the rest, who have gained much greater matters by it.

WE get forwards in the world not so much by

doing services, as receiving them you take a withering twig, and put it in the ground; and then you water it, because you have planted it.

Monsieur le comte de B-, merely because he had done me one kindness in the affair of my passport, would go on and do me another, the few days he was at Paris, in making me known to a few people of rank; and they were to present me to others, and so on.

I had got master of my secret just in time to turn these honours to some little account; other

wise, as is commonly the case, I should have dined or supped a single time or two round and then by translating French looks and attitudes into plain English, I should presently have seen, that I had got hold of the couvert* of some more entertaining guest; and in course should have resigned all my places one after another, merely upon the principle that I could not keep them. As it was, things did not go much amiss.

I had the honour of being introduced to the old marquis de B: in days of yore he had signalized himself by some small feats of chivalry in the cour d'amour, and had dressed himself out to the idea of tilts and tournaments ever since the marquis de B-wished to have it thought the affair was somewhere else than in his brain. « He could like to take a trip to England », and asked much of the English ladies. Slay where you are, I beseech you, Monsieur le ́marquis, said I Les messieurs Anglois can scarce get a kind look from them as it is. marquis invited me to supper.

The

Monsieur P-** the farmer-general was just as

inquisitive about our taxes. considerable, he heard

They were very

If we knew but how

to collect them, said I, making him a low bow.

I could never have been invited to Monsieur P's concerts upon any other terms.

* Plate, napkin, knife, fork, and spoon. ** Perceval.

I had been misrepresented to Madame de Vas an esprit Madame de V was an esprit herself; she burnt with impatience to see me, and hear me talk. I had not taken my seat, before I saw she did not care a sous whether I had any wit or no-I was let in, to be convinced she had.- I call heaven to witness I never once opened the door of my lips.

Madame de V-vowed to every creature she met, « She had never had a more improving conversation with a man in her life. >>

There are three epochas in the empire of a Frenchwoman -She is coquette then deistthen dévote the empire during these is never lost she only changes her subjects: when thirty-five years and more have unpeopled her dominion of the slaves of love, she repeoples it with slaves of infidelity and then with the slaves of the church.

Madame de V-was vibrating betwixt the first of these epochas: the colour of the rose was fading fast away she ought to have been a deist five years before the time I had the honour to pay my first visit.

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She placed me upon the same sofa with her, for the sake of disputing the point of religion more closely. In short, Madame de V- told me, she believed nothing.

I told Madame de V- it might be her principle; but I was sure it could not be her interest

to level the out-works, without which I could not conceive how such a citadel as hers could be defended that there was not a more dangerous thing in the world, than for a beauty to be a deist that it was a debt I owed my creed, not to conceal it from her that I had not been five minutes sat upon the sofa beside her, but I had begun to form designs-and what is it, but the sentiments of religion, and the persuasion they had existed in her breast, which could have checked them as they rose up?

-

We are not adamant, said I, taking hold of her hand and there is need of all restraints, till age in her own time steals in and lays them on us-but, my dear lady, said I, kissing her hand it is too too soon.

I declare I had the credit all over Paris of unperverting Madame de V— She affirmed to Monsieur D- and the abbé M-*, that in one half hour I had said more for revealed religion, than all their Encyclopedia had said against it I was listed directly into Madame de V's colerie and she put off the epocha of deism

for two years.

I remember it was in this coterie, in the middle of a discourse, in which I was shewing the necessity of a first cause, that the young count de Fainéant took me by the hand to the furthest corner of the room, to tell me my solitaire was * Diderot and the abbé Morellet.

pinned too strait about my neck-It should be plus badinant, said the count looking down upon but a word, Monsieur Yorick, to the

his own wise

And from the wise, Monsieur le comte, replied I, making him a bow

is enough.

The count de Fainéant embraced me with more ardour than ever I was embraced by mortal man, For three weeks together, I was of every man's opinion I met. Pardi! ce Monsieur Yorick a autant d'esprit que nous autres. Il raisonne bien, said another. C'est un bon enfant, said a third. And at this price I could have eaten and drank, and been merry all the days of my life at Paris; but it was a dishonest reckoning— grew ashamed of it it was the gain of a slave - every sentimoat of honour revolted against it - the higher I got, the more was I forced upon my beggarly system the belter the coterie · the more children of art-I languished for those of Nature and one night, after a most vile : stitution of myself to half a dozen different people, I grew sick went to bed-ordered La Fleur to get me horses in the morning to set out for Italy.

I

pro

I

NEVER felt what the distress of plenty was in any one shape till now to travel it through