as, and exactly in the shape of, a tansy
pudding. You squeeze between these and a river, that is conducted at
obtuse angles in a stone channel, and supplied by a pump; and when
walnuts come in I suppose it will be navigable. In a corner enclosed by
a chalk wall are the samples I mentioned; there is a strip of grass,
another of corn, and a third _en friche_, exactly in the order of beds
in a nursery. They have translated Mr. Whately's book,[1] and the Lord
knows what barbarism is going to be laid at our door. This new
_Anglomanie_ will literally be _mad English_.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Whately, the Secretary to the Treasury, had published
an essay on Gardening.]

New _arrets_, new retrenchments, new misery, stalk forth every day. The
Parliament of Besancon is dissolved; so are the _grenadiers de France_.
The King's tradesmen are all bankrupt; no pensions are paid, and
everybody is reforming their suppers and equipages. Despotism makes
converts faster than ever Christianity did. Louis _Quinze_ is the true
_rex Christianissimus_, and has ten times more success than his
dragooning great-grandfather. Adieu, my dear Sir! Yours most faithfully.

_Friday 9th._

... It is very singular that I have not half the satisfaction in going
into churches and convents that I used to have. The consciousness that
the vision is dispelled, the want of fervour so obvious in the
religious, the solitude that one knows proceeds from contempt, not from
contemplation, make those places appear like abandoned theatres destined
to destruction. The monks trot about as if they had not long to stay
there; and what used to be holy gloom is now but dirt and darkness.
There is no more deception than in a tragedy acted by candle-snuffers.
One is sorry to think that an empire of common sense would not be very
picturesque; for, as there is nothing but taste that can compensate for
the imagination of madness, I doubt there will never be twenty men of
taste for twenty thousand madmen. The world will no more see Athens,
Rome, and the Medici again, than a succession of five good emperors,
like Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, and the two Antonines.

_August_ 13.

Mr. Edmonson has called on me; and, as he sets out to-morrow, I can
safely trust my letter to him. I have, I own, been much shocked at
reading Gray's[1] death in the papers. 'Tis an hour that makes one
forget any subject of complaint, especially towards one with whom I
lived in friendship from thirteen years old