in general I received a perfectly good
account of their morals, and of their attention to their duties. With
some of the higher clergy I had a personal acquaintance, and of the rest
in that class a very good means of information. They were almost all of
them persons of noble birth. They resembled others of their own rank;
and where there was any difference, it was in their favor. They were
more fully educated than the military noblesse,--so as by no means to
disgrace their profession by ignorance, or by want of fitness for the
exercise of their authority. They seemed to me, beyond the clerical
character, liberal and open, with the hearts of gentlemen and men of
honor, neither insolent nor servile in their manners and conduct. They
seemed to me rather a superior class,--a set of men amongst whom you
would not be surprised to find a Fenelon. I saw among the clergy in
Paris (many of the description are not to be met with anywhere) men of
great learning and candor; and I had reason to believe that this
description was not confined to Paris. What I found in other places I
know was accidental, and therefore to be presumed a fair sample. I spent
a few days in a provincial town, where, in the absence of the bishop, I
passed my evenings with three clergymen, his vicars-general, persons who
would have done honor to any church. They were all well-informed; two of
them of deep, general, and extensive erudition, ancient and modern,
Oriental and Western,--particularly in their own profession. They had a
more extensive knowledge of our English divines than I expected; and
they entered into the genius of those writers with a critical accuracy.
One of these gentlemen is since dead: the Abbe Morangis. I pay this
tribute without reluctance to the memory of that noble, reverend,
learned, and excellent person; and I should do the same with equal
cheerfulness to the merits of the others, who I believe are still
living, if I did not fear to hurt those whom I am unable to serve.

Some of these ecclesiastics of rank are, by all titles, persons
deserving of general respect. They are deserving of gratitude from me,
and from many English. If this letter should ever come into their hands,
I hope they will believe there are those of our nation who feel for
their unmerited fall, and for the cruel confiscation of their fortunes,
with no common sensibility. What I say of them is a testimony, as far as
one feeble voice can go, which I owe to truth. When