s n'avez jamais vue la foire St. Ovide_," said she; "_je
vous assure que cela surpasse beaucoup ces trifles palais qu'on
vantetant_[Q]." And _this could_ only have been arrogance, for she was a
very sensible and a very accomplished woman; and when talked to about
the literary merits of her own countrymen, spoke with great acuteness
and judgment.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote Q: You admire it, says she, only because you never saw the
fair at St. Ovid's in Paris; I assure you there is no comparison between
those gay illuminations and these dismal palaces the Venetians are so
fond of.]

General knowledge, however, it must be confessed (meaning that general
stock that every one recurs to for the common intercourse of
conversation), will be found more frequently in France, than even in
England; where, though all cultivate the arts of table eloquence and
assembly-room rhetoric, few, from mere shyness, venture to gather in the
profits of their plentiful harvest; but rather cloud their countenances
with mock importance, while their hearts feel no hope beat higher in
them, than the humble one of escaping without being ridiculed; or than
in Italy, where nobody dreams of cultivating conversation at all--_as an
art_; or studies for any other than the natural reason, of informing or
diverting themselves, without the most distant idea of gaining
admiration, or shining in company, by the quantity of science they have
accumulated in solitude. _Here_ no man lies awake in the night for
vexation that he missed recollecting the last line of a Latin epigram
till the moment of application was lost; nor any lady changes colour
with trepidation at the severity visible in her husband's countenance
when the chickens are over-roasted, or the ice-creams melt with the
room's excessive heat.

Among the noble Senators of Venice, meantime, many good scholars, many
Belles Lettres conversers, and what is more valuable, many thinking men,
may be found, and found hourly, who employ their powers wholly in care
for the state; and make their pleasure, like true patriots, out of _her
felicity_. The ladies indeed appear to study but _one_ science;

And where the lesson taught
Is but to please, can pleasure seem a fault?

Like all sensualists, however, they fail of the end proposed, from hurry
to obtain it; and consume those charms which alone can procure them
continuance or change of admirers; they injure their health too
irreparably, and _that_ in th