han Rheims. 'Tis no little inducement to make me
wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left off there; that
you may be polite, and not be thought awkward for it. You know the
pretty men of the age in England use the women with no more deference
than they do their coach-horses, and have not half the regard for them
that they have for themselves. The little freedoms you tell me you use
take off from formality, by avoiding which ridiculous extreme we are
dwindled into the other barbarous one, rusticity. If you had been at
Paris, I should have inquired about the new Spanish ambassadress, who,
by the accounts we have thence, at her first audience of the queen, sat
down with her at a distance that suited respect and conversation.

Adieu, dear George,

Yours most heartily.

_THEATRES AT PARIS--ST. DENIS--FONDNESS OF THE FRENCH FOR SHOW, AND FOR
GAMBLING--SINGULAR SIGNS--THE ARMY THE ONLY PROFESSION FOR MEN OF GENTLE
BIRTH--SPLENDOUR OF THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS._

TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ.

PARIS, _April_ 21, N.S. 1739.[1]

[Footnote 1: He is here dating according to the French custom. In
England the calendar was not rectified by the disuse of the "Old Style"
till 1752.]

Dear West,--You figure us in a set of pleasures, which, believe me, we
do not find; cards and eating are so universal, that they absorb all
variation of pleasures. The operas, indeed, are much frequented three
times a week; but to me they would be a greater penance than eating
maigre: their music resembles a gooseberry tart as much as it does
harmony. We have not yet been at the Italian playhouse; scarce any one
goes there. Their best amusement, and which, in some parts, beats ours,
is the comedy; three or four of the actors excel any we have: but then
to this nobody goes, if it is not one of the fashionable nights; and
then they go, be the play good or bad--except on Moliere's nights, whose
pieces they are quite weary of. Gray and I have been at the Avare
to-night: I cannot at all commend their performance of it. Last night I
was in the Place de Louis le Grand (a regular octagon, uniform, and the
houses handsome, though not so large as Golden Square), to see what they
reckoned one of the finest burials that ever was in France. It was the
Duke de Tresmes, governor of Paris and marshal of France. It began on
foot from his palace to his parish-church, and from thence in coaches to
the opposite end of Paris, to be interred in the church of the
Ce