system. The first, if a lady happen to be old or plain, or indifferent
to him, is apt to limit his attentions to respect, or utility--now the
latter never troubles himself with these distinctions: he is repulsed by
no extremity of years, nor deformity of feature; he adores, with equal
ardour, both young and old, nor is either often shocked by his visible
preference of the other. I have seen a youthful beau kiss, with perfect
devotion, a ball of cotton dropped from the hand of a lady who was
knitting stockings for her grand-children. Another pays his court to a
belle in her climacteric, by bringing _gimblettes_ [A sort of
gingerbread.] to the favourite lap-dog, or attending, with great
assiduity, the egresses and regresses of her angola, who paces slowly out
of the room ten times in an hour, while the door is held open by the
complaisant Frenchman with a most respectful gravity.

Thus, you see, France is to the old what a masquerade is to the ugly
--the one confounds the disparity of age as the other does that of
person; but indiscriminate adoration is no compliment to youth, nor is a
mask any privilege to beauty. We may therefore conclude, that though
France may be the Elysium of old women, England is that of the young.
When I first came into this country, it reminded me of an island I had
read of in the Arabian Tales, where the ladies were not deemed in their
bloom till they verged towards seventy; and I conceived the project of
inviting all the belles, who had been half a century out of fashion in
England, to cross the Channel, and begin a new career of admiration!--
Yours, &c.




Amiens, 1793.