in the very worst plantation-accent.  I don’t know whether you know that none of the people of that immense continent have any labials:  they tell you que c’est ridicule to shut the lips in order to speak.  Indeed, I was as barbarous as any polite nation in the world, in supposing that there was nothing worth knowing among these charming savages.  They are in particular great orators, with this little variation from British eloquence, that at the end of every important paragraph they make a present; whereas we expect to receive one.  They begin all their answers with recapitulating what has been said to them; and their method for this is, the respondent gives a little stick to each of the bystanders, who is, for his share, to remember such a paragraph of the speech that is to be answered.  You will wonder that I should have given the preference to the Ontaouanoucs, when there is a much more extraordinary nation to the north of Canada, who have but one leg, and p—­ from behind their ear; but I own I had rather converse for any time with people who speak like Mr. Pitt, than with a nation of jugglers, who are only fit to go about the country, under the direction of Taafe and Montagu.(523) Their existence I do not doubt; they are recorded by P`ere Charlevoix, in his much admired history of New France, in which there are such outrageous legends of miracles for the propagation of the Gospel, that his fables in natural history seem strict veracity.

Adieu!  You write to me as seldom as if you were in an island where the Duke of Newcastle was sole minister, parties at an end, and where every thing had done happening.  Yours ever.

P. S. I have just seen in the advertisements that there are arrived two new volumes of Madame de S`evign`e’s Letters.  Adieu, my American studies!—­adieu, even my favourite Ontaouanoucs!

(517) The Duke of Newcastle.

 (518) Afterwards Lord Dacre.

(519) Thomas ninth Lord Dacre.  Going, with other young persons, one night from Herst Monceaux to steal a deer out of his neighbour, Sir Nicholas Pelham’s park (a frolic not unusual in those days), a fray ensued, and one of the park-keepers received a blow that caused his death; and although Lord Dacre was not present on the spot, but in a distant part of the park, he was nevertheless tried, convicted, and executed, in 1541.  His honours became forfeited, but were restored to his son in 1562.-E.

(520) Dr. Charles Lyttelton, brother of Lord Lyttelton.  He was first a barrister-at-law, but in 1712 entered into holy orders, and in 1762 was consecrated Bishop of Carlisle.  He died in 1768, unmarried.-E.

(521) Mr. Muntz, a Swiss painter.

(522) Mr. Smith, the English consul at Venice, had engaged Canaletti for a certain number of years to paint exclusively for him, at a fixed price, and sold his pictures at an advanced price to English travellers.

(523) See ant`e 93, letter 35.-E.