was sufficient to make them popular with the people.]

[Footnote 2: The following specimen of these vaudevilles was given by
Madame du Deffand to Walpole:--

"L'avez-vous vue, ma Du Barry,
Elle a ravi mon ame;
Pour elle j'ai perdu l'esprit,
Des Francais j'ai le blame:
Charmants enfans de la Gourdon,
Est-elle chez vous maintenant?
Rendez-la-moi,
Je suis le Roi,
Soulagez mon martyre;
Rendez-la-moi,
Elle est a moi,
Je suis son pauvre Sire.
L'avez-vous vue," &c.

"Je sais qu'autrefois les laquais
On fete ses jeunes attraits;
Que les cochers,
Les perruquiers,
L'aimaient, l'aimaient d'amour extreme,
Mais pas autant que je l'aime.
L'avez-vous vue," &c.]

[Footnote 3: The Comptroller-General was the Abbe Terrai, notoriously as
corrupt as he was incompetent. One of his measures, reducing the
interest on the Debt by one-half, was tantamount to an act of
bankruptcy; but the national levity comforted itself by jests, and one
evening, when the pit at the theatre was crowded to suffocation, one of
the sufferers carried the company with him by shouting out a suggestion
to send for the Abbe Terrai to reduce them all to one-half their size.]

_ENGLISH GARDENING IN FRANCE--ANGLOMANIE--HE IS WEARY OF PARIS--DEATH OF
GRAY._

TO JOHN CHUTE, ESQ.

Paris, _August_ 5, 1771.

It is a great satisfaction to me to find by your letter of the 30th,
that you have had no return of your gout. I have been assured here, that
the best remedy is to cut one's nails in hot water. It is, I fear, as
certain as any other remedy! It would at least be so here, if their
bodies were of a piece with their understandings; or if both were as
curable as they are the contrary. Your prophecy, I doubt, is not better
founded than the prescription. I may be lame; but I shall never be a
duck, nor deal in the garbage of the Alley.

I envy your _Strawberry tide_, and need not say how much I wish I was
there to receive you. Methinks, I should be as glad of a little grass,
as a seaman after a long voyage. Yet English gardening gains ground here
prodigiously--not much at a time, indeed--I have literally seen one,
that is exactly like a tailor's paper of patterns. There is a Monsieur
Boutin, who has tacked a piece of what he calls an English garden to a
set of stone terraces, with steps of turf. There are three or four very
high hills, almost as high