chief. You yourself are too great a bounty to be received at once; therefore I must be prepared by degrees, lest the mighty gift distract me with joy. Dear Mrs. Scurlocke, I am tired with calling you by that name; therefore say the day in which you will take that of, Madam, your most obedient, most devoted humble servant, MADAM, LETTER III. R. STEELE. Aug. 22, 1707*. wel IF my vigilance, and ten thousand wishes for your fare and repose, could have any force, you last night slept in security, and had every good angel in your attendance. To have my thoughts ever fixed on you, to live in constant fear of every accident to which human life is liable, and to send up my hourly prayers to avert them from you; I say, Madam, thus to think, and thus to suffer, is what I do for her who is in pain at my approach, and calls all my tender sorrow impertinence. You are now before my eyes, my eyes that are ready to flow with tenderness, but cannot give relief to my gushing heart, that dictates what I am now saying, and yearns to tell you all its achings. How art thou, oh my soul, stolen from thyself! how is all thy attention broken! My books are blank paper, and my friends intruders. I have no hope of quiet but from your pity to grant it, would make more for your triumph. To give pain, is the tyranny, to make happy, the true empire, of beauty. If you would consider aright, you would find an agreeable change, in dismissing the attendance of a slave, to receive the complaisance of a companion. I bear the former, in hopes of the latter condition. As I live in chains without murmuring at the power which inflicts them, so I could enjoy freedom without forgetting the mercy that gave it. Dear Mrs. Scurlocke, the life which you bestow on me shall be no more my own. 1 am, your most devoted, most obedient servant, MADAM, R. STEELE. LETTER IV. Aug. 30, 1707. I BEG pardon that my paper is not fiuer, but I am forced This date is in part cut out, and supplied with "Aug. 9, 1671." Over "Madam," at the beginning, Mrs. S. has written "Andromache," and substituted "Madam" for dear" Mrs. Scurlocke" at the end, to write from a coffee-house, where I am attending about business. There is a dirty crowd of busy faces all around me, talking of money; while all my ambition, all my wealth, is love! Love which animates my heart, sweetens my humour, enlarges my soul, and affects every action of my life. It is to my lovely charmer I owe, that many noble ideas are continually affixed to my words and actions; it is the natural effect of that generous passion, to create in the admirer some similitude of the object admired. Thus, my dear, am I every day to improve from so sweet a compa nion. Look up, my fair-one, to that Heaven which made thee such, and join with me to implore its influence on our tender innocent hours, and beseech the author of love, to bless the rites he has ordained, and mingle with our happiness a just sense of our transient condition, and a resignation to his will, which only can regulate our minds to a steady endeavour to please him and each other. I am for ever your faithful servant, 1787, April. R. STEELE. LVII. Letters from Ephraim Chambers. MR. URBAN, THE Dictionary of Mr. Chambers has so widely diffused his fame, that I have no doubt but some original letters of his will give pleasure to many of your readers. I send you two of them by way of specimen, which were written during a journey in France; and will send you more, if these are thought worth inserting. Yours, &c. LETTER I. M. GREEN, To Mrs. Chambers. MADAM, Paris, Oct. 21, 1738, N. S. I DID not think to have given you the trouble of a letter till I had something agreeable to write. You have had a sufficient share of illness yourself to exempt you from being harrassed with the complaints of others. But as you laid me under an engagement to write to you, I know not whe ther I can any longer fairly delay it. You will be sur prized, when I tell you, that Paris seems to me the dullest place in the world; and you will doubtless have more regard to my reputation than to tell any body I say so. For people disposed to go in search of pleasure, perhaps there is no place where they are like to meet with so much. But there is no medium; either you must engage heartily in the diversions of the place, or find yourself sunk in the vapours ten thousand fathoms deep. It is from a depth not less than this that I write the present letter; a depth to which a man could never reach in any place but where every body is gay about him, and where he has not only the load of his own melancholy to bear, but of other people's mirth. It is certain, however, Paris now appears under great disadvantages; the court is at a distance, and the people of quality mostly gone into the country; besides that, the fine season is over, and the beautiful gardens, walks, and woods, which make the chief beauty of it, lie in a sort of ruins, which makes autumn look in some respects more dismal even than winter. The favourite diversion of the French is walking, and taking the air, and the country about Paris is admirably laid out for that purpose. Here are the gardens of the Thuilleries and Luxemburgh, the Course, the woods of Boulogne and Vincennes, the Avenue of St. Cloud and Meudon, which form a variety in this way vastly beyond any thing we have in England. This difference, I think, is observable between the two nations, that the French seek their chief pleasures without doors, and the English within. I know not whether this difference be owing to any diversity in the air of the two places; or to this, that the French are more in the air than we, which makes them alert and hardy, and gives them an appetite. It is certain, they are more familiar, and make more free with the air than we do. see the public walking-places full from morning to night in the severest weather. They will sit for hours on the benches where an Englishman would be frozen to death. And, what is more, in the dampest weather, and even night, great numbers of them will be found sitting or lying on the bare ground. At first, one would be tempted to think, that, if there were not something less noxious in the air here than in that of England, half the inhabitants must be rotten. But I doubt whether there be much in this. The French are made familiar with the air betimes, so grow hardy and strong. They seem to feel no cold, when I am ready to starve and though the winter here be colder than at London, I doubt whether there be half the fire burnt. You will perceive by this what way my thoughts have been employed at Paris. If you send a valetudinarian to travel, what You else can you expect from him, but observations on the weather and the wind? If you would have an account of their dress, their buildings, furniture, equipages, balls, intrigues, &c. you must send somebody else. There are indeed a thousand things of the kind, which even an indifferent spectator cannot help observing; but they hardly seem to me worth postage, though they may do well enough for chat round a winter's fire. I have been now near a month at Paris, which is much too long, considering what a journey I have still behind. To-morrow I set out for Lyons, in my way to Languedoc. I applied to a physician here for some advice about my journey; and was unfortunate enough to take some of his medicines, which have weakened and done me harm, so that I have been forced to lie by a week, to retrieve myself. I intend to travel on horseback, having found the conveyance by chaise or coach does not agree with me. If my strength holds out, I hope I may reach Montpellier in about twenty days. The distance is near 500 English miles. The expedition is hazardous enough; but my heart is pretty good, and that is all I have for it, excepting an easy horse and a careful servant. I want much to know how you do, and the rest of my friends: but in this vagrant state I know not when I shall be so happy. Possibly I may trouble some of you with a letter from Lyons, or even sooner, if any thing of consequence happens. I write by this post to Mr. Longman for another remittance of money, which I shall want much. Pray present my sincere respects to... and... I have not room to be more particular. For yourself, if you will forgive me the trouble of this letter, it will make me more than ever, Madam, your obedient humble servant, LETTER II. EPH. CHAMbers. For Mrs. Chambers. MADAM, Montpellier, Dec. 18, 1738, O. S. 1 FIND you expect fine things from Montpellier, and that a letter written at my usual rate will hardly pass. So fine a climate, you think, ought not to be lost on me. Though I was permitted to be dull in England, yet a man, who claims the same privilege here, ought either to be sent home, or to the gallies. You have some reason in all this ; and yet for once, I must beg leave to write like myself: my will is still English; I have yet received no extraordinary supplies from the climate: when I do, you shall be sure to have the first sample. I have been here but a month, one half of which I have been confined by a cold, and the rest by the ill weather. Winter, I find, is winter every where, notwithstanding all that had been told me to the contrary. The people of England make themselves more uneasy than they need be as to the seasons and the weather; they seem not a whit worse off than the people of France, so far as I can judge from the three months I have been in this kingdom. Both the colds and the heats, and the droughts and the rains, are certainly here greater and more frequent than with you. It is only in respect of the fogs that the French pretend to any advantage over you; and I doubt whether even this pretension be well founded. I have travelled three days on this side Lyons, through one perpetual fog, which did not clear up, as yours usually do,after a few hours, but grew thicker and thicker every day, till night: nor was this any thing accidental; since some gentlemen, who passed the same a month before me, found the very same. way Since my arrival here, where I expected nothing but clear skies and sun-shine, things have been still worse. One would swear that all the witches in Lapland had been at work, and that half of the ill weather bestowed over the face of the globe had been discharged here. For my part, the rains have been so continual, that, had not I had great faith in Moses and the rainbow, I should have feared another deluge. Indeed, between one run of terrible weather and another, they have now and then a fine summer's day; but these are only transient smiles, for which they are sure to pay dear: they serve for little but to make the rest more completely dismal. In the general, you may be assured, that the inhabitants of Montpellier see much less of the sun than those of London. Their streets are so excessively narrow, and their houses so high, that the sun can never enter them. It is only in the very extremities of the town that they can ever enjoy so agreeable a spectacle. Where I am quartered, which is towards the middle, the sun is about as much seen as in an English coal-pit. I have no less than twelve windows in my chamber; yet I have scarcely light enough from them all to scribble this at noon-day without a candle. To know whether or no the sun shines, I am forced to go out of the cells; and have been sometimes surprized, the moment I passed the gates, to find myself step at once into a glorious summer's sun, out of a place dark and chilly as the shadow of death. You see, Madam, I am but where I was at Paris. I wrote to you there on the |