may possibly be known to you by his observations on
this subject, or still more probably by those upon the Aetiniae; the
latter having been translated into English, and honored with a place in
the Transactions of our Royal Society. Of more extensive, but not more
justly merited, fame, are George Scudery and his sister Magdalen: the
one a voluminous writer in his day, though now little known, except for
his _Critical Observations upon the Cid_; the other, a still more
prolific author of novels, and alternately styled by her contemporaries
the Sappho of her age, and "un boutique de verbiage;" but unquestionably
a writer of merit, notwithstanding the many unmanly sneers of Boileau,
whose bitter pen, like that of our own illustrious satirist, could not
even consent to spare a female that had been so unfortunate as to
provoke his resentment. She died in 1701, at the advanced age of
ninety-four. The last upon my list is one of whom death has very
recently deprived the world, the excellent Bernardin de Saint Pierre; a
man whose writings are not less calculated to improve the heart than to
enlarge the mind. It is impossible to read his works without feeling
love and respect for the author. His exquisite little tale of _Paul and
Virginia_ is in the hands of every body; and his larger work, the
_Studies of Nature_, deserves to be no less generally read, as full of
the most original observations, joined to theories always ingenious,
though occasionally fanciful: the whole conveyed in a singularly
captivating style, and its merits still farther enhanced by a constant
flow of unaffected piety.

The road from Havre to Rouen is of a different character, and altogether
unlike that from Dieppe; but what it gains in beauty of landscape it
loses in interest. And yet, perhaps, it is even wrong to say that it
gains much in point of beauty; for, though: trees are more generally
dispersed, though cultivation is universal, and the soil good, and
produce luxuriant, and though the mind and the eye cannot but be pleased
by the abundance and verdure of the country, yet in picturesque effect
it is extremely deficient. Monotony, even of excellence, displeases. I
am speaking of the road which passes through Bolbec and Yvetot: there is
another which lies nearer to the banks of the Seine, through Lillebonne
and Caudebec, and this, I do not doubt, would, in every point of view,
have been preferable.

At but a short distance from Havre, to the left, li