stage is fallen off though in the only part I have seen Le Kain(870) I admire him extremely.  He is very ugly and ill made,(871) and yet has an heroic dignity which Garrick wants, and great fire.  The Dumenil I have not seen yet, but shall in a day or two.  It is a mortification that I cannot compare her with the Clairon,(872) who has left the stage.  Grandval I saw through a whole play without suspecting it was he.  Alas! four-and-twenty years make strange havoc with us mortals!  You cannot imagine how this struck me!  The Italian comedy, now united with their Opera comique, is their most perfect diversion; but alas!  Harlequin, my dear favourite harlequin, my passion, makes me more melancholy than cheerful.  Instead of laughing, I sit silently reflecting how every thing loses charms when one’s own youth does not lend. its gilding!  When we are divested of that eagerness and illusion with which our youth presents objects to us, we are but the caput mortuum of pleasure.

Grave as these ideas are, they do not unfit me for French company.  The present tone is serious enough in conscience. unluckily, the subjects of their conversation are duller to me than my own thoughts, which may be tinged with melancholy reflections, but I doubt from my constitution will never be insipid.

The French affect philosophy, literature, and freethinking:  the first never did, and never will possess me; of the two others I have long been tired.  Freethinking is for one’s self, surely not for society; besides one has settled one’s way of thinking, or knows it cannot be settled, and for others I do not see why there is not as much bigotry in attempting conversions from any religion as to it.  I dined to-day with a dozen savans, and though all the servants were waiting, the conversation was much more unrestrained, even on the Old Testament, than I would suffer at my own table in England, if a single footman was present.  For literature, it is very amusing when one has nothing else to do.  I think it rather pedantic in society; tiresome when displayed professedly; and, besides, in this country one is sure, it is only the fashion of the day.  Their taste in it is worst of all:  could one believe that when they read our authors, Richardson and Mr. Hume should be their favourites?  The latter is treated here with perfect veneration.  His history, so falsified in many points, so partial in as many, so very unequal in its parts, is thought the standard of writing.

In their dress and equipages they are grown very simple.  We English are living upon their old gods and goddesses; I roll about in a chariot decorated with cupids, and look like the grandfather of Adonis.