red man, you must
play genteelly at quadrille; would you get a reputation of good sense,
show judgment at quadrille. However in summer one may pass a day without
quadrille; because there are agreeable promenades, and little parties
out of doors. But in winter you are reduced to play at it, or sleep,
like a fly, till the return of spring.

"Indeed in the morning the Duke hunts,"--mark that Duke, and two Sons he
has. "But my malicious stars have so contrived it, that I am no more
a sportsman than a gamester. There are no men of learning in the whole
Country; on the contrary, it is a character they despise. A man of
quality caught me, the other day, reading a Latin Author; and asked me,
with an air of contempt, Whether I was designed for the Church? All
this would be tolerable if I was not doomed to converse with a set of
English, who are still more ignorant than the French; and from whom,
with my utmost endeavors, I cannot be absent six hours in the day. Lord"
BLANK--Baltimore, or Heaven-knows-who,--"is the only one among them who
has common sense; and he is so scandalously debauched, in his principles
as well as practice, that his conversation is equally shocking to my
morals and my reason."--Could not one contrive to get away from them;
to Soissons, for example, to see business going on; and the Terrestrial
Balance settling itself a little?

"My only improvement here is in the company of the Duke," who is a
truly distinguished Duke to his bad Country; "and in the exercise of the
Academy,"--of Horsemanship, or what? "I have been absent from the latter
near three weeks, by reason of a sprain I got in the sinews of my leg.
My duty to my dear Mother; I hope you and she continue well. I am, Sir,
your dutiful Son.--G. L." [_The Works of Lord George Lyttelton,_ by
Ayscough (London, 1776), iii. 215.]

These poor Lorrainers are in a bad way; their Country all trampled
to pieces by France, in the Louis-Fourteenth and still earlier times.
Indeed, ever since the futile Siege of Metz; where we saw the great
Kaiser, Karl V., silently weeping because he could not recapture Metz,
[Antea, vol. v. p. 211.] the French have been busy with this poor
Country;--new sections of it clipt away by them; "military roads through
it, ten miles broad," bargained for; its Dukes oftenest in exile,
especially the Father of this present Duke: [A famed Soldier in his day;]
under Kaiser Leopold, "the little Kaiser in red stockings," one of whose
Daughte