e unthought-of, unexpected end comes suddenly upon us,
and finishes at once the fluctuating scene. Reflections must now give
way to facts for a moment, though few English people want to be told
that every hotel here, belonging to people of condition, is shut out
from the street like our Burlington-house, which gives a general gloom
to the look of this city so famed for its gaiety: the streets are narrow
too, and ill-paved; and very noisy, from the echo made by stone
buildings drawn up to a prodigious height, many of the houses having
seven, and some of them even eight stories from the bottom. The
contradictions one meets with every moment likewise strike even a
cursory observer--a countess in a morning, her hair dressed, with
diamonds too perhaps, a dirty black handkerchief about her neck, and a
flat silver ring on her finger, like our ale-wives; a _femme publique_,
dressed avowedly for the purposes of alluring the men, with not a very
small crucifix hanging at her bosom;--and the Virgin Mary's sign at an
alehouse door, with these words,

Je suis la mere de mon Dieu,
Et la gardienne de ce lieu[C].

[Footnote C:
The mother of my God am I,
And keep this house right carefully.
]

I have, however, borrowed Bocage's Remarks upon the English nation,
which serve to damp my spirit of criticism exceedingly: She had more
opportunities than I for observation, not less quickness of discernment
surely; and her stay in London was longer than mine in Paris.--Yet, how
was she deceived in many points!

I will tell nothing that I did not _see_; and among the objects one
would certainly avoid seeing if it were possible, is the deformity of
the poor.--Such various modes of warping the human figure could hardly
be observed in England by a surgeon in high practice, as meet me about
this country incessantly.--I have seen them in the galleries and
outer-courts even of the palace itself, and am glad to turn my eyes for
relief on the Duke of Orleans's pictures; a glorious collection! The
Italian noblemen, in whose company we saw it, acknowledged with candour
the good taste of the selection; and I was glad to see again what had
delighted me so many years before: particularly, the three Marys, by
Annibale Caracci; and Rubens's odd conceit of making Juno's Peacock peck
Paris's leg, for having refused the apple to his mistress.

The manufacture at the Gobelins seems exceedingly improved; the
colouring less inharmonious, the d