e honest
hot-headed marshal Staremberg. One of the most accomplished men I
have seen at Vienna, is the young count Terracco, who accompanies the
amiable prince of Portugal. I am almost in love with them both, and
wonder to see such elegant manners, and such free and generous
sentiments in two young men that have hitherto seen nothing but their
own country. The count is just such a Roman-catholic as you; he
succeeds greatly with the devout beauties here; his first overtures
in gallantry are disguised under the luscious strains of spiritual
love, that were sung formerly by the sublimely voluptuous Fenelon,
and the tender madam Guion, who turned the fire of carnal love to
divine objects: thus the count begins with the _spirit_, and ends
generally with the _flesh_, when he makes his addresses to holy
virgins.

I MADE acquaintance yesterday with the famous poet Rousseau, who
lives here under the peculiar protection of prince Eugene, by whose
liberality he subsists. He passes here for a free-thinker, and, what
is still worse in my esteem, for a man whose heart does not feel the
encomiums he gives to virtue and honour in his poems. I like his
odes mightily; they are much superior to the lyric productions of our
English poets, few of whom have made any figure in that kind of
poetry. I don't find that learned men abound here; there is, indeed,
a prodigious number of alchymists (sic) at Vienna; the _philosopher's
stone_ is the great object of zeal and science; and those who
have more reading and capacity than the vulgar, have transported
their superstition (shall I call it?) or fanaticism, from
religion to chymistry (sic); and they believe in a new kind of
transubstantiation, which is designed to make the laity as rich as
the other kind has made the priesthood. This pestilential passion
has already ruined several great houses. There is scarcely a man of
opulence or fashion, that has not an alchymist in his service; and
even the emperor is supposed to be no enemy to this folly, in secret,
though he has pretended to discourage it in public.

PRINCE EUGENE was so polite as to shew me his library yesterday; we
found him attended by Rousseau, and his favourite count Bonneval, who
is a man of wit, and is here thought to be a very bold and
enterprizing (sic), spirit. The library, though not very ample, is
well chosen; but as the prince will admit into it no editions but
what are beautiful and pleasing to the eye, and there a