coincide thoroughly with thofe of the master of the house, or perhaps the evening facrifice to Bacchus may procure you an expulfion ten miles diftance from an habitable house at midnight, if you should differ from him in his notions of state affairs. The Chevalier de St. George has his health often drank in this country; which is most certainly a blooming promise of success, after more than fixty years exile.

THE peasants wear no fhoes about their houfes, and in their common travelling the roads they carry them in their hands, and wash their feet near the towns which they are travelling to, when they put on them, and their stockings; many of them however have none. And yet, thefe poor creatures would think themfelves doom'd to perpetual flavery, if they were obliged to wear wooden fhoes; the ideas of wooden fhoes, flavery, and French, being all link'd together in their imaginations; they would scarce prefer them to confinement without, and as foon wear chains, as preserve their feet from injury by these contrivances; the flattering idea of being free, tho' barefooted, gives them no little confolation amidst as much flavery as poverty and depend

ance

ance can bequeath; except in imagination, the place, perhaps, where that and all our pleasures begin and end.

THERE is one remarkable and very effential difference, between these people and the Scotch; the first defend their countrymen and country in converfation, and retire if poffible to live amongst their relations, when they have faved fome little fortune in England; the latter speak highly of Scotland and Scotchmen, but never choose to see the land from whence they came. I am more inclined to think the Welchman fincere, than the Scot, in his attachment to his country; and for this reafon, the latter being prefbyterians, from which race I have remarked hypocrify is almost infeparable; the highlanders, who are episcopalians, resemble the Welch.

THE inhabitants are extremely fubject to anger, and to take revenge by law; they resemble amongst the English, the Normans in France; their paffions and parties precipitate them into very ftrange decifions in their public trials, where D 2 they

they are jurymen; infomuch, that all difputes of confequence are carried into the cities of England to be decided by the English juries, who have no partiality for either fide in the debate.

3

THIS is what I have collected for you in Wales, and tho' not so fashionable, nor the voyage fo dangerous as going to measure the pyramids of Egypt, vifiting the catacombs and cataracts of the Nile; yet perhaps, the Welch cuftom of weddings, being put in execution in Italy, would impart as much utility, as all P's voyage, which you affure me you have lately laboured thro'; I imagine by way of penance, instead of lafhing yourself with a whip of thongs; furely your lent must have been fevere, if as you tell me you abftained during that time from all good fenfe, and lived on fuch terrible meagre.

INDEED I could fend you many drawings of ruins from this part, but alas! we abound with too many of them in our own country; and tho' I venerate the remains of ancient palaces and temples; I am enemy enough to that taste,

tafte, to wish every stone of old Rome converted into fome useful and habitable building, and the city in its former glory and extent, tho' all the infcriptions and fculptures were demolifhed. Heaven defend this and me from the eyes and tongue of vértu. I am,

LET

LETTER XXXI.

To the Reverend Father VINCENZO SPINELLO at Rome.

Dear Sir,

IN

I

N this country profufion is luxury, and whatever cofts much money is always extremely polite; for that reafon it is polite to dine with the nobility, where you pay the fervants for ten times as much as you eat. An open table, in this city, would ruin every man of a small eftate to be entertained at it.

ONE would be led to imagine, that the English were determined to deftroy all fubordination, by the treatment of their fervants; they give them greater wages than in any country on earth; they are better fed than all others; even the common maid fervants muft have their tea twice a day, in all the parade of quality; they make it their bargain at firft: this very article amounts to as much as the wages of fervants in Italy.

BESIDES