very good-natured in truth, but whose common countenance implies ill-nature, even to brutality.  It was Miss H——­n, Lady M—­y’s niece, whom you have seen both at Blackheath and at Lady Hervey’s.  Lady M—­y was saying to me that you had a very engaging countenance when you had a mind to it, but that you had not always that mind; upon which Miss H——­n said, that she liked your countenance best, when it was as glum as her own.  Why then, replied Lady M—­y, you two should marry; for while you both wear your worst countenances, nobody else will venture upon either of you; and they call her now Mrs. Stanhope.  To complete this ‘douceur’ of countenance and motions, which I so earnestly recommend to you, you should carry it also to your expressions and manner of thinking, ’mettez y toujours de l’affectueux de l’onction’; take the gentle, the favorable, the indulgent side of most questions.  I own that the manly and sublime John Trott, your countryman, seldom does; but, to show his spirit and decision, takes the rough and harsh side, which he generally adorns with an oath, to seem more formidable.  This he only thinks fine; for to do John justice, he is commonly as good-natured as anybody.  These are among the many little things which you have not, and I have, lived long enough in the world to know of what infinite consequence they are in the course of life.  Reason then, I repeat it again, within yourself, consequentially; and let not the pains you have taken, and still take, to please in some things be a ‘pure perte’, by your negligence of, and inattention to others of much less trouble, and much more consequence.

I have been of late much engaged, or rather bewildered, in Oriental history, particularly that of the Jews, since the destruction of their temple, and their dispersion by Titus; but the confusion and uncertainty of the whole, and the monstrous extravagances and falsehoods of the greatest part of it, disgusted me extremely.  Their Talmud, their Mischna, their Targums, and other traditions and writings of their Rabbins and Doctors, who were most of them Cabalists, are really more extravagant and absurd, if possible, than all that you have read in Comte de Gabalis; and indeed most of his stuff is taken from them.  Take this sample of their nonsense, which is transmitted in the writings of one of their most considerable Rabbins:  “One Abas Saul, a man of ten feet high, was digging a grave, and happened to find the eye of Goliah, in which he thought proper to bury himself, and so he did, all but his head, which the Giant’s eye was unfortunately not quite deep enough to receive.”  This, I assure you, is the most modest lie of ten thousand.  I have also read the Turkish history which, excepting the religious part, is not fabulous, though very possibly not true.  For the Turks, having no notion of letters and being, even by their religion, forbid the use of them, except for reading and transcribing the Koran, they have no historians of their own, nor any authentic