in this however, I am a true catholic, and act on implicit faith.

THIS I am fure of, that no scheme will be rejected at Paris, because it comes from London, and none left unrewarded; because I have known feveral that have been well received; tho' there is more than one in this kingdom, who having contrived useful machines, have yet never met reward or encouragement, and at prefent languish in obfcurity.

THAT England has once been the deserved wonder of Europe, is certainly indisputable; the fire has blazed extremely bright, and the fuel has been the fooner confumed; the present ministry, whose duty it is to continue that supply, are inattentive to the confequence, and confider it poffible for the great particulars to be at ease and happy, without caring whether the people

THERE is fcarce a motive to human actions, I mean a laudable one, which is not totally exhaufted; patriotifm, or love of our country, is now ridiculed even in the little boroughs, and ba

nished

nished all polite company; religion has no longer interest fufficient to create a dispute in its favour ; even Lord Bolingbroke's pofthumous works do not fell. The minds of the professed free-thinkers, are fettled into a thorough conviction, that religion is a plaufible error, and at present are in no neceffity of reading any thing to confirm them in that idea; and yet this arifes from the infufficiency of all kinds of fubjects to move men to read them, and not from improved knowledge, or deeper thinking.

THE whole motive to action in this ifland is the enriching the individual, where every purfuit is lawful, which does not miscarry; a man who has held confiderable employments under the crown, to whom the diftribution of tickets was entrusted in the last lottery, violated the law made on that account, in his own favour immediately, and yet he retains his places, and I hear of no punishment which he is like to undergo.

THE fame is to be found in all poffible ways where it is practicable; and yet these people ftill believe that a nation can hold together, where

3

where every part is corrupted; they might as well expect this of a human body, and it would be as true; the cause is hid from common eyes, and others are regardless of the event. I am,

Your most obedient fervant.

LET

LETTER LI.

To the Reverend Father FILIPPO BONINI, at Rome.

D

Dear Sir,

URING the time I tarried in Paris, Icould never perceive that the French mufic was ever adapted to the words which accompanied them; no paffion whether love or hatred, anger or defpair, were attended with those founds, which are uttered by those who are under the influence of either of these paffions.

THE lover, but for his action in his tender paffages, would to my hearing have been indiftinguishable from those in his rage; the mufic feem'd as well adapted for the expreffing one sensation as the other in each circumftance; this made the French opera a most displeasing entertainment to my ears, especially when every thing was accompanied with a fquawl, which is as much out of tune, as the crying of cats, or a pig leading to the flaughter.

NOTWITH

NOTWITHSTANDING this, to the fenfe of feeing, an opera in France is an agreeable amusement; even the chorus of fingers, which made my cars thrill with horror, offered an agreeable entertainment to my eyes, and in fome measure abated the distress of hearing; and tho' Jelliot gave me pain in his finging, yet Duprés charmed me with his graceful attitudes in dancing; the eye is exquifite, and the ear almost void of diftinction in the natives of France. Yet it must be acknowledged, that the little chansons à boire, and gay fonnets, are fet naturally and well, and all the others infufferable; these are innate to every French creature.

PERHAPS the French language, which seems but badly adapted for poetry, is not capable of being fet to mufic, in parts which express the pathetic or any other paffion; and the fame fault has crept into the founds which form their language, thro' want of accuracy in the organs of hearing, that has into their mufic from the fame cause.

METHINKS;