I shall at last know none as I should do. I live
in a place, that very well represents the tower of Babel: in Pera
they speak Turkish, Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, Arabic, Persian,
Russian, Sclavonian, Walachian, German, Dutch, French, English,
Italian, Hungarian; and, what is worse, there are ten of these
languages spoken in my own family. My grooms are Arabs; my footmen
French, English, and Germans; my nurse an Armenian; my house-maids
Russians; half a dozen other servants, Greeks; my steward an Italian;
my janizaries Turks; so that I live in the perpetual hearing of this
medley of sounds, which produces a very extraordinary effect upon the
people that are born here; for they learn all these languages at the
same time, and without knowing any of them well enough to write or
read in it. There are very few men, women, or even children here,
that have not the same compass of words in five or six of them. I
know, myself, several infants of three or four years old, that speak
Italian, French, Greek, Turkish, and Russian, which last they learn
of their nurses, who are generally of that country. This seems
almost incredible to you, and is, in my mind, one of the most curious
things in this country, and takes off very much from the merit of our
ladies, who set up for such extraordinary geniuses, upon the credit
of some superficial knowledge of French and Italian.

AS I prefer English to all the rest, I am extremely mortified at the
daily decay of it in my head, where I'll assure you (with grief of
heart) it is reduced to such a small number of words, I cannot
recollect any tolerable phrase to conclude my letter with, and am
forced to tell your ladyship very bluntly, that I am,
Your's, &C. &c.

LET. XLI.

TO THE COUNTESS OF B----.

AT length I have heard from my dear Lady B----, for the first time.
I am persuaded you have had the goodness to write before, but I have
had the ill fortune to lose your letters. Since my last, I have
staid (sic) quietly at Constantinople, a city that I ought in
conscience to give your ladyship a right notion of, since I know you
can have none but what is partial and mistaken from the writings of
travellers. 'Tis certain, there are many people that pass years here
in Pera, without having ever seen it, and yet they all pretend to
describe it. Pera, Tophana, and Galata, wholly inhabited by French
Christians (and which, together, make the a