beds, or
clean their apartment. The same spirit of idleness and dissipation I
have observed in every part of France, and among every class of people.

Every object seems to have shrunk in its dimensions since I was last in
Paris. The Louvre, the Palais-Royal, the bridges, and the river Seine,
by no means answer the ideas I had formed of them from my former
observation. When the memory is not very correct, the imagination
always betrays her into such extravagances. When I first revisited my
own country, after an absence of fifteen years, I found every thing
diminished in the same manner, and I could scarce believe my own eyes.

Notwithstanding the gay disposition of the French, their houses are all
gloomy. In spite of all the ornaments that have been lavished on
Versailles, it is a dismal habitation. The apartments are dark,
ill-furnished, dirty, and unprincely. Take the castle, chapel, and
garden all together, they make a most fantastic composition of
magnificence and littleness, taste, and foppery. After all, it is in
England only, where we must look for cheerful apartments, gay
furniture, neatness, and convenience. There is a strange incongruity in
the French genius. With all their volatility, prattle, and fondness for
bons mots, they delight in a species of drawling, melancholy, church
music. Their most favourite dramatic pieces are almost without
incident; and the dialogue of their comedies consists of moral, insipid
apophthegms, intirely destitute of wit or repartee. I know what I
hazard by this opinion among the implicit admirers of Lully, Racine,
and Moliere.

I don't talk of the busts, the statues, and pictures which abound at
Versailles, and other places in and about Paris, particularly the great
collection of capital pieces in the Palais-royal, belonging to the duke
of Orleans. I have neither capacity, nor inclination, to give a
critique on these chef d'oeuvres, which indeed would take up a whole
volume. I have seen this great magazine of painting three times, with
astonishment; but I should have been better pleased, if there had not
been half the number: one is bewildered in such a profusion, as not to
know where to begin, and hurried away before there is time to consider
one piece with any sort of deliberation. Besides, the rooms are all
dark, and a great many of the pictures hang in a bad light. As for
Trianon, Marli, and Choissi, they are no more than pigeon-houses, in
respect to palaces; and, notwiths