en, even so as to produce
effects visible in their external form. They have the large black
eyes of the country, with the fat, white, fishy flesh of Holland, and
a lively air streaked with dulness. At one and the same time, they
shew that love of expensiveness, so universal among the Greeks, and
an inclination to the Dutch frugality. To give an example of this;
young women ruin themselves, to purchase jewels for adorning their
heads, while they have not the heart to buy new shoes, or rather
slippers for their feet, which are commonly in a tattered condition;
a thing so contrary to the taste of our English women, that it is for
shewing how neatly their feet are dressed, and for shewing this only,
they are so passionately enamoured with their hoop petticoats. I
have abundance of other singularities to communicate to you; but I am
at the end, both of my French and my paper.

CONCERNING

Monsieur de la ROCHEFOUCAULT'S Maxim--_"That marriage is sometimes
"convenient but never delightful."_

IT may be thought a presumptuous attempt in me to controvert a maxim
advanced by such a celebrated genius as Monsieur Rochefoucault, and
received with such implicit faith by a nation which boasts of
superior politeness to the rest of the world, and which, for a long
time past, has prescribed the rules of gallantry to all Europe.

NEVERTHELESS, prompted by that ardour which truth inspires, I dare to
maintain the contrary, and resolutely insist, that there are some
marriages formed by love, which may be delightful, where the
affections are sympathetic. Nature has presented us with pleasures
suitable to our species, and we need only to follow her impulse,
refined by taste, and exalted by a lively and agreeable imagination,
in order to attain the most perfect felicity of which human nature is
susceptible. Ambition, avarice, vanity, when enjoyed in the most
exquisite perfection, can yield but trifling and tasteless pleasures,
which will be too inconsiderable to affect a mind of delicate
sensibility.

WE may consider the gifts of fortune as so many steps necessary to
arrive at felicity, which we can never attain, being obliged to set
bounds to our desires, and being only gratified with some of her
frivolous favours, which are nothing more than the torments of life,
when they are considered as the necessary means to acquire or
preserve a more exquisite felicity.

THIS felicity consists alone in friendship, founded on mutual estee