up to their relations large family estates to retire to that dreary solitude. The père coadjuteur and the père général were really fine gentlemen, of easy and polite conversation. They had both lived much in the gay world. From satiety and disgust they had retired from it, to that internal peace and tranquillity which they told me they had found only in those deserts. This guilty world however they did not seem quite to forget, for I saw on the table of the père général the Mercure Historique, printed at Amsterdam, and the Journal Encyclopédique of Bouillon, and they asked me a thousand questions about the late war, and the affairs of England.

I have been with Voltaire at Ferney, and was charmed with the reception he gave me, and still more with the fine sense and exquisite wit of his conversation. I think him the most universal genius, the most amiable as well as the wittiest of our species. He is a divine old man, born for the advancement of true philosophy and the polite arts, and to free mankind from the gloomy terrors of superstition,

Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum

Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari.

He has done more to persuade the practice of a general toleration, of humanity, and benevolence than the greatest philosophers of antiquity. His conduct in the affair of the family of Calus is more meritorious than the whole lives of most saints. He is exactly well bred, and in conversation possesses a fund of gaiety and humour, which would be admired in a young man, and

he joins to it those immense stores of literature only to be acquired by age. His memory is very wonderful, and the anecdotes it furnishes are so various and interesting, that he is the only exception I know of a man above seventy not being sunk into his anecdotage. He lives in the noblest, gayest style of a French nobleman, receiving all strangers, giving plays in his own theatre, and you have the entire command of his house, equipages, horses, &c. He is adored by all the inhabitants and vassals of his extensive domains, and with reason, for he hath been the creator of every thing useful, beautiful, or valuable in the whole track near him, which before was a rude wilderness. When he came, "the desert smiled, and Paradise was opened in the wild." He has built little towns and villages, established several manufactures, and peopled the country with a happy race of mortals, who are daily blessing their benefactor. I told him, "These are thy glorious works, parent of good," and he is really more pleased in talking of them than of his most applauded literary works. The charming PuIcelle is his favourite. He is sometimes wanton in her praise, and is sure of her kind reception by all posterity. Nothing delights him more than the marriage and establishment of his vassals, and on those occasions he is always bountiful. There is not a miserable being dependent on him. He has filled all hearts with food and gladness-almost to the walls of Geneva, where you have only food and sadness. With every possible advantage from nature, Geneva is the most disagreeable

Dutchy of Savoy are poor, wretched peasants, cruelly oppressed, ragged, and almost naked; so striking is the difference under the same climate, at so small a distance, between the slaves of a despotic prince, and the free subjects of a mild republic.

SAMUEL FOOTE TO MR. GARRICK.

DEAR SIR,

Cannon Park, March 2, [1766.] BEFORE I had the favour of yours, I had discovered the blunder with regard to my letter,-it is transmitted to you by this post. Davis's letter was a noble present indeed; pray can you conceive what he means by the necessity he now supposes me under of growing speedily rich? If one could suspect so grave, sententious, and respectable a character of the vice of punning, I should imagine his insinuation to be, that now I have but one leg* it won't be so easy for me to run out; but here, perhaps, like Warburton on Shakspeare, I have found out a meaning the author never had.

I was ever of opinion, that you would find the Bath waters a specific. Sir Francis Delaval and Lady Stanhope are particularly happy that you have chosen this time; for, say they, Cannon Park is between the two roads to Bath-Andover and Newberry-to Bagshot, Basingstoke, Overton, then four miles to Cannon Park, where you dine

*The first three letters were written while Foote was confined, after the loss of his leg.

and lie; then six miles to Newberry, and so on. I won't tell you what my wishes are upon this occasion, nor indeed any body here, for ever since I have been ill they have refused me every one thing I have liked. I thank you for your comedy. Lady Stanhope has seen it, and is charmed; but I am determined not to look at a line till I am quite out of pain.

You will have this letter by Captain Millbank, who is called to town by an appointment in Pye's squadron for the West Indies. I think I am something better than when I wrote you my last, though I have not been free from pain one minute since my cruel misfortune, nor slept a wink without the assistance of laudanum. The people below expect to see you on Wednesday. You must allow for, and, indeed, almost decipher my letters, but then consider, my dear sir, thirty days upon my back, &c. &c. I assure you it is with great difficulty (and many shifts I am obliged to make) I am able to scribble at all. Little Derrick will give the etiquette of the bath, and be exceedingly useful but I am quite exhausted. God bless you, sir.

*

SAM. FOOTE.

*

SAMUEL FOOTE TO MR. GARRICK.

You receive, my dear sir, this letter from your poor unfortunate friend, in the same situation as when I had first the honour of acknowledging your kindness and humanity to me, in bed upon my back.