believe; for he jests upon sacred things;
and professes to hate the clergy of all religions. He has high notions
of honour, a world hardly ever out of his mouth; but seems to have no
great regard to morals.

Mr. TOURVILLE occasionally told his age; just turned of thirty-one. He
is also of an ancient family; but, in his person and manners, more of what
I call the coxcomb than any of his companions. He dresses richly;
would be thought elegant in the choice and fashion of what he wears; yet,
after all, appears rather tawdry than fine.--One sees by the care he
takes of his outside, and the notice he bespeaks from every one by his
own notice of himself, that the inside takes up the least of his
attention. He dances finely, Mr. Lovelace says; is a master of music,
and singing is one of his principal excellencies. They prevailed upon
him to sing, and he obliged them both in Italian and French; and, to do
him justice, his songs in both were decent. They were all highly
delighted with his performance; but his greatest admirers were, Mrs.
Sinclair, Miss Partington, and himself. To me he appeared to have a
great deal of affectation.

Mr. Tourville's conversation and address are insufferably full of those
really gross affronts upon the understanding of our sex, which the
moderns call compliments, and are intended to pass for so many instances
of good breeding, though the most hyperbolical, unnatural stuff that can
be conceived, and which can only serve to show the insincerity of the
complimenter, and the ridiculous light in which the complimented appears
in his eyes, if he supposes a woman capable of relishing the romantic
absurdities of his speeches.

He affects to introduce into his common talk Italian and French words;
and often answer an English question in French, which language he greatly
prefers to the barbarously hissing English. But then he never fails to
translate into this his odious native tongue the words and the sentences
he speaks in the other two--lest, perhaps, it should be questioned
whether he understands what he says.

He loves to tell stories: always calls them merry, facetious, good, or
excellent, before he begins, in order to bespeak the attention of the
hearers, but never gives himself concern in the progress or conclusion of
them, to make good what he promises in his preface. Indeed he seldom
brings any of them to a conclusion; for if his company have patience to
hear him out, he breaks in upo