other in a
rose-coloured silk coat, with white satin waistcoat and small clothes,
and white silk stockings. The greater part of the ladies were dressed in
fancy habits from the antique. Some were sphinxes, some vestals, some
Dians, half a dozen Minervas, and a score of Junos and Cleopatras. One
girl was pointed out to me as being perfectly _a l'Anglaise_. Her hair,
perfectly undressed, was combed off her forehead, and hung down her back
in its full length behind. She reminded me only of a school-boy playing
without his hat.

We were summoned to the supper table about three in the morning. This
repast was a perfect English dinner. Soup, fish, poultry and ragouts,
succeeded each other in almost endless variety. A fruit-basket was
served round by the servants together with the bread-basket, and a small
case of liqueurs was placed at every third plate. Some of these were
contained in glass figures of Cupids, in which case, in order to get at
the liqueur, it was necessary to break off a small globule affixed to
the breast of the figure. The French confectioners are more ingenious
than delicate in these contrivances; but the French ladies seem better
pleased with such conceit in proportion to their intelligible
references. Some of these naked Cupids, which were perfect in all their
parts, were handed from the gentlemen to the ladies, and from the ladies
to each other, and as freely examined and criticised, as if they had
been paintings of birds. The gentlemen, upon their parts, were equally
as facetious upon the naked Venuses; and a Swan affixed to a Leda, was
the lucky source of innumerable pleasant questions and answers. Every
thing, in a word, is tolerated which can in any way be passed into an
equivoque. Their conversation in this respect resembles their dress--no
matter how thin that covering may be, so that there be one.

So much for a French assembly or fashionable rout, which certainly
excells an English one in elegance and fancy, as much as it falls short
of it in substantial mirth. The French, it must be confessed, infinitely
excell every other nation in all things connected with spectacle, and
more or less this spectacle pervades all their parties. They dance, they
converse, they sing, for exhibition, and as if they were on the stage.
Their conversation, therefore, has frequently more wit than interest,
and their dancing more vanity than mirth. They seem in both respects to
want that happy carelessness which pleas