custom, chofe her to carry to Verfailles, and to the Duke of Bedford his ambaffador at Paris, the ratification of the treaty of peace concluded between the two nations. It was upon this occafion, that the king gave her the crofs of Saint Louis. He had already beftowed two penfions upon her. It muft indeed be acknowledged, that she is the most extraordinary perfon of the age. We have feveral times feen women metamorphofed into men, and doing their duty in the war; but we have seen no one who has united fo many military, political, and literary talents. Character of the French. "A of their actions, and the fplendour of their principles, kindle the moft noble paffions in our minds; and, when we come to be men, the nature of our government feeds this flame, and we glow with a certain internal ardour, which occafionally breaks out into action, and which is neither known nor comprehended but in the dominions of Britain. I do justice here to my country; and my foul feels happy, that I am able to give her, with truth, a fuperiority over the univerfe in genius and magnanimity. But if from this I fhall be underftood to think meanly of the French, because they are the rivals and enemies of this nation, From it would indeed be to mifinterpret me much. Though I do not think that people equal to this in greatnefs, I think them a very great people. And if the English are fuperior to the French in all the more elevated qualities which dignify and ennoble humanity; fo the French furpafs the English in all the milder and gentler vir tues, which grace and adorn it. Frenchman," fays the Earl of Chesterfield, "who, with a fund of learning, virtue, and good fenfe, has the manners and good-breeding of his country, is the perfection of human nature." I am not an enemy to the French; but I do not think this affertion true. In my opinion, the following would have been jufter: An Englishman, who joins manners and good-breeding to the folidity, energy, and greatness of mind, which characterize his country, is the perfection of human nature. I do not mean to compliment. But fentiments and actions are upon a more elevated scale here than can be found in any other nation in the world. There are no effects without caufes; and the caufes of this are very obvious. We pass our youth with the Greeks and Romans. Their great examples expand our fouls; the brightnefs In England the French have few friends. But they have one; and that one am I. They could not, I acknowledge, have a feebler advocate; but while I have a tongue to fpeak, or a pen to write, wherever I go I'll do them juftice. Let every man who knows that nation fpeak of it as he found it; if he lived in their intimacy for years (as I did), and if he found them ill-natured, ill-mannered, treacherous, and cowardly, let him fpeak his mind. I quarrel with no man who judges for himfelf, and who fpeaks the truth. But But let the indulgence I grant, be granted to me again; and let me be permitted to tell the world, that, however other men may have found them, I found them goodhumoured, good-natured, brave, polished, frank and friendly. the British fleet, that every Eng lishman has in exerting all his powers to annihilate the navy of France. If a blast of my breath could fend all the fhips fhe has to the bottom of the fea-Puff They were funk, before you could finish this period. But is it a rea They were my friends, faithful and just to fon I fhould hate or defpife the me; But Brutus fays they are perfidious; I fpeak not to difprove what Brutus fpoke; I found them all animated with a defire to please, and always ready to do me every fervice in their power. I owe them a thousand obligations. I had faults; they corrected them: I wanted knowledge; they informed me: I was rough; they foftened me: I was fick; they vifited me: I was vain; they flattered me: I had need of counfel; they gave me the best advice: every man has need of agreeable company, and every man may be sure to find it in France. I could be lavish in praife of this nation; but I am forry to fay, that too many people here have prejudices against them, as ridiculous as they are ill-founded. They defpife the French as if they were beings without either fenfe or fentiment; though their writings and actions fhew they are full of both. Because two states have different interefts, is that a reafon that every individual belonging to thofe ftates fhould promote, to the utmost of his abilities, the intereft and glory of the country to which he belongs? It certainly is. And therefore, every Frenchman has the fame merit in labouring with all his might for the deftruction of French, because I am naturally and neceffarily the enemy of France? The best way I think to judge this matter is to take two other rival nations; Austria and Prusfia; Athens and Sparta. Here you are difpaffionate; your judg ment will be juft. Do you think it the duty of a liberal-minded Pruffian to defpife an Auftrian? Or, fhould a well-born Athenian deteft a Lacedæmonian, because he is equally animated by the fame noble flame that warms himself, the love of his country? The nation which is able to rival another, proves herself worthy the admira tion of that nation even by her rivality; and had I no other reason to confider the French as a great people, befide their being able to contend with England, that proof for me would be fufficient. But the French are perfidious in politics. I deny that they can be perfidious with the English. They may be treacherous, for aught I know, with the Auftrians and the Spaniards. There they profefs friendship. They are of the fame religion, frequently intermarry, and have frequent alliances. With England, France has no connection. She may overreach her in politics; but the never can deceive her by perfidy; because fhe is her uniform enemy. There is not an infant that does not not know that France ever was, and ever, will be, the enemy of England. The making a peace is not making a friendship; and the French will not be more the friends of England when this peace is made, than they were five years before the war began; or than they are now. The rivality between the two nations will laft while the nations laft. They are littora litteribus contraria, oppofite in every thing. It is the duty of France to deprefs England as much as fhe can. It is the duty of England to keep down France as much as is in her power. It is the duty of both to do juftice to the other. This juftice the French do render the English. I am forry I cannot fay the English do the fame by them. Every clafs of men in France praife the people of this country: fome, the folidity of their understanding, and the extent of their genius; others, the energy and vigour of their character; many, their magnanimity and benevolence; and all, their courage and good faith. While here-but I blush for numbers, and am ashamed to finish my period. Character of the French Ladies compared with that of the Englith. From the fame. fay fomething about fo confiderable a part of it, the subject must appear mutilated and imperfect. As brevity is the foul of wit, Shall be brief; and I fhall only touch on the principal points in which the women of France differ from thofe of other countries. When a French lady comes into a room, the first thing that ftrikes you is, that he walks better, holds herfelf better, has her head and feet better dreffed, her cloaths better fancied, and better put on, than any woman you have ever feen. When the talks fhe is the art of pleafing perfonified. Her eyes, her lips, her words, her geftures, are all prepoffeffing. Her language is the language of amiablenefs; her accents are the accents of grace. She embellishes a trifle; the interefts upon a nothing; the foftens a contradiction; fhe takes off the infipidness of a compliment by turning it elegantly; and, when the has a mind, the sharpens and polishes the point of an epigram better than all the women in the world. Her eyes fparkle with spirit; the most delightful fallies flash from her fancy; in telling a ftory, fhe is inimitable; the motions of her body, and the accents of her tongue, are equally genteel and eafy; an equable flow of foftened fprightlinefs keeps her conftantly WOMEN area fubject upon good-humoured and chearful: and which fo much has been faid and written by fo many men of abilities, that it is not easy to imagine a new light to fhew them in; or to place them in an attitude, in which they have not been already placed. But, talking of a nation, if one did not the only objects of her life are to pleafe, and to be pleased. Her vivacity may Sometimes approach to folly; but perhaps it is not in her moments of folly the is leaft interefting and agreeable. English women have many points of fuperiority over the French; the the French are fuperior to them in many others. I have mentioned fome of these points in other places. Here I fhall only fay, there is a particular idea in which no woman in the world can compare with a French-woman ; it is in the power of intellectual irritation. She will draw wit out of a fool. She ftrikes with fuch addrefs the cords of self-love, that fhe gives unexpected vigour and agility to fancy; and electrifies a body that appeared non-elec tric. I have mentioned here the women of England; and I have done wrong. ftand justly enough for an em blem of French women. I have decided the question without intending it; for I have given the preference to the women of Eng land, One point I had forgotten; and it is a material one. It is not to be difputed on; for what I am going to write is the opinion and fentiment of the univerfe. The English women are the beft wives under heaven-and fhame be on the men who make them bad husbands! I did not intend it Character of the Italians. From when I began the letter. They came into my mind as the only women in the world worthy of being compared with thofe of France. To fettle the respective claims of the fair fex in thofe two countries, requires an abler pen than mine. I fhall not dare to examine it even in a fingle point; nor prefume to determine whether, in the important article of beauty, form and colour are to be preferred to expreffion and grace, or whether grace and expreffion are to be confidered as preferable to complexion and fhape. I fhall not examine whether the piquant of France is to be thought fuperior to the touch. ant of England; or whether deep fenfibility deferves to be preferred to animation and wit. So im portant a fubject requires a volume. I fhall only venture to give a trait. If a goddess could be fuppofed to be formed, compounded of Juno and Minerva, that goddess would be the emblem of the women of this country. Venus, as fhe is, with all her amiableneffes and imperfections, may M the fame. EDIOCRITY is rare here; every thing is in extremes. No where is fo fine mufic to be heard; no where (except at the opera of Paris) are the ears fo cruelly tortured: the eyes are charmed and tormented alternate ly by the most fuperb and most deteftable pictures and statues. No citizens; an exceffive luxury amongst individuals; and the people in the most abject mifery. It is the fame in regard to refi gion; you will fee nothing but a blind fuperftition or determined atheifts. But of all the extremes the most striking are those which are obferved in the character of the nation. The Italian, in general, is exceedingly good, or wicked to a degree. There are excellent hearts in this country; but, like the great pictures, they are scarce. Men are born there with ftrong paffions, and, not receiving any education, it is not aftonishing that they often commit great crimes. Under a cold ex 1 terior they conceal burning hearts; and their exterior is cold only to conceal their hearts. Love, jealoufy, and revenge are their ruling paffions; as they think only of the fenfual part of love, and know well the conftitutions of their women, and the wiles of their rivals, their jealoufy is always awake, and their revenge is implacable. As to understanding, it is nearly the fame; men of talents form the large clafs; there are few fools; and middling men are very rare. "Why then, you will afk, do these men produce nothing excellent?" Because they have ungoverned imaginations, and no philofophy; and becaufe good tafte has not yet penetrated into their country. And why has not good tafte entered Italy? Becaufe Italy has neither a London nor a Paris; and because she never had a Lewis the fourteenth. Travellers are often mistaken in judging of the Italian, especially the Neapolitan. They think he has no fenfe, because he wants ideas. A man can have but few ideas when he has never been out of his own country, and when he has read nothing, but examine the Neapolitan on all the fubjects with which he is acquainted, and you will fee whether he wants natural capacity. He refembles the foil of his own country: a field well tilled in Naples produces the moft plentiful crops; neglected, it yields but briars and thiftles. It is the fame with the genius of the inhabitants: cultivated, it is capable of every thing; untilled, it produces only folly and vice. VOL. XXIV. Sketch of the Life and Character of the famous Poet Lope de Vega; from a Book entitled "Letters from an English Traveller in Spain, &c." TH Madrid, August 15, 1778. HOUGH I perfectly agree with you in opinion relating to our immortal Shakespeare, yet I cannot refrain from doing that juftice to his contemporary Lope de Vega which his moft extraordinary talents deferve; I fhall therefore attempt to give you the character of this great poet, which is no eafy task when his amazing abilities are confidered; however, I fhall venture to proceed, as this will be the last letter I shall write to you from hence. Lope Felix de Vega Carpio, born the 25th of November 1562, was the fon of Felix Vega de Carpio, a gentleman of Madrid, who had the reputation of being a very good poet, a turn which he obferved with rapture in his child from its infancy, and which the fond parent cherished with the greatest delight. At five years of age young Lope could read Spanish and Latin fluently, and even make verfes, which he exchanged with his fchool-fellows for pictures and other trifles. His father, charmed with this furprizing dawn of genius, fpared no pains to cultivate a darling plant, that feemed to encourage the most flattering expectations. At the age of twelve, Lope was mafter of the Latin tongue and the art of rhetoric; could dance and fence with eafe and dexterity, and fing with a tolerable tafte.-Endowed with these accomplishments, he became D an |