Yours ever.

To-morrow we go to the Cid.  They have no farces, but petites pieces like our ‘Devil to Pay.’

MAGNIFICENCE OF VERSAILLES—­THE CHARTREUX RELICS.

TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ.

FROM PARIS, 1739.

Dear West,—­I should think myself to blame not to try to divert you, when you tell me I can.  From the air of your letter you seem to want amusement, that is, you want spirits.  I would recommend to you certain little employments that I know of, and that belong to you, but that I imagine bodily exercise is more suitable to your complaint.  If you would promise me to read them in the Temple garden, I would send you a little packet of plays and pamphlets that we have made up, and intend to dispatch to “Dick’s"[1] the first opportunity.—­Stand by, clear the way, make room for the pompous appearance of Versailles le Grand!——­But no:  it fell so short of my idea of it, mine, that I have resigned to Gray the office of writing its panegyric.  He likes it.  They say I am to like it better next Sunday; when the sun is to shine, the king is to be fine, the water-works are to play, and the new knights of the Holy Ghost are to be installed!  Ever since Wednesday, the day we were there, we have done nothing but dispute about it.  They say, we did not see it to advantage, that we ran through the apartments, saw the garden en passant, and slubbered over Trianon.  I say, we saw nothing.  However, we had time to see that the great front is a lumber of littleness, composed of black brick, stuck full of bad old busts, and fringed with gold rails.  The rooms are all small, except the great gallery, which is noble, but totally wainscoted with looking-glass.  The garden is littered with statues and fountains, each of which has its tutelary deity.  In particular, the elementary god of fire solaces himself in one.  In another, Enceladus, in lieu of a mountain, is overwhelmed with many waters.  There are avenues of water-pots, who disport themselves much in squirting up cascadelins.  In short, ’tis a garden for a great child.  Such was Louis Quatorze, who is here seen in his proper colours, where he commanded in person, unassisted by his armies and generals, and left to the pursuit of his own puerile ideas of glory.

[Footnote 1:  A celebrated coffee-house, near the Temple Gate in Fleet Street, where quarto poems and pamphlets were taken in.]

We saw last week a place of another kind, and which has more the air of what it would be, than anything I have yet met with:  it was the convent of the Chartreux.  All the conveniences, or rather (if there was such a word) all the adaptments are assembled here, that melancholy, meditation, selfish devotion, and despair would require.  But yet ’tis pleasing.  Soften the terms, and mellow the uncouth horror that reigns here, but a little, and ’tis a charming solitude.  It stands on a large space of ground, is old and irregular.  The chapel is