he uses every precaution that prudence dictates.

This noisy bustling distracted City resembles what it has been for the last century ; the Revolution might occasion some little interruption; but like an elastic energy, the people's temper has reverted to what it was; cookery continues a principal science among these gormandizing people, and coffee houses and traiteurs are in such numbers that it appears as if there were no other occupation among them but pampering their vitiated appetites; the servants, the master, the mistress; all are cooks, and all are every morning studying and preparing dainty dishes for dinner. There are as many great spectacles, subordinate ones, illuminated gardens, ball-rooms, raree-shews, and other rendezvous of dissipation as ever corrupted Sybaris. Whatever sanctity may be in the churches, in almost every other part of the

City is obscenity, immorality, and profliga cy; female dress has exhausted its variety, and now it is almost wholly discarded: the ladies are so slightly and transparently clad, that they are as little concealed as the women of ancient Lacedemon.

The Parisian ladies walk with a quick short step, graceful and alluring; but they seem always in haste; coaches drive furiously; cabriolets go at full trot; people gesticulate and speak vociferously; the streets are narrow, and the noise resounds all over them; there seems incessant confusion and riot. Those who would live without care, without reflexion, and without meddling with the government, and can devote themselves to incessant festivity, will prefer Paris to any other European city. But if they like moderate amusements, rational enjoyments, and contemplation, they

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will chuse London. The wines in France are more genuine and wholesome than in England, and provision at half the price. The interval of a ten years' war has not divested the French of old habits; they remember our countrymen's silly fondness for titles; and from Calais to Paris, My Lord" echoes through every inn; and master, waiters, and maids expect liberal pay for the honors they confer. There are few highwaymen and bold robbers in France; but exhorbitant traiteurs, pilfering bourgeois, and tricking tradesmen out of number: they have improved in cheating; and so assiduous as if they meant to recompence themselves for ten years inactivity and loss. Gaming houses defy the police; they pay a tax to government, and are tolerated.

Bonaparte shews his judgment in the rejection of the emigrants; he sees that,

though their re-admission into France is no restoration of their privileges, nor repossession of their estates, that they are still imperious and incorrigible; that indulgence cannot mollify them, nor generosity make them grateful: no class respects them: and though the utter deprivation of rank and riches should humble them, they are as offensive as in the days of Capet. They are unable to make any requital for our humanity to them in England; nor is any expected from them; but----they appear to have forgotten it.

LETTER XXL

Paris, October 24, 1802.

I CANNOT constantly write on the lofty themes of Kings and Palaces; I must be permitted sometimes to descend to lower, though not humbler subjects. Beside Mr. Fox, Mr. Erskine, Mr. Curran, General Fitzpatrick, Mr. Adair, Lord Carhampton, &c. &c. who may be stiled the first party here, there is another, which in strictness of order, should be deemed an inferior party; but inferior is a term I dare not apply to it, without exasperating a society, prone enough to do mischief when there is no

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