assertion. Lady Holland asked her how she liked Strawberry Hill? She
owned that she did not approve of it, and that it was not _digne de la
solidité Angloise_. It made me laugh for a quarter of an hour. They
allot us a character we have not, and then draw consequences from that
idea, which would be absurd, even if the idea were just. One must not
build a Gothic house because the nation is _solide_. Perhaps, as
everything now in France must be _à la Grecque_, she would have liked a
hovel if it pretended to be built after Epictetus's--but Heaven forbid
that I should be taken for a philosopher! Is it not amazing that the
most sensible people in France can never help being domineered by sounds
and general ideas? Now everybody must be a _géomètre_, now a
_philosophe_, and the moment they are either, they are to take up a
character and advertise it: as if one could not study geometry for one's
amusement or for its utility, but one must be a geometrician at table,
or at a visit! So the moment it is settled at Paris that the English are
solid, every Englishman must be wise, and, if he has a good
understanding, he must not be allowed to play the fool. As I happen to
like both sense and nonsense, and the latter better than what generally
passes for the former, I shall disclaim, even at Paris, the
_profondeur_, for which they admire us; and I shall nonsense to admire
Madame de Boufflers, though her nonsense is not the result of nonsense,
but of sense, and consequently not the genuine nonsense that I honour.
When she was here, she read a tragedy in prose to me, of her own
composition, taken from "The Spectator:" the language is beautiful and
so are the sentiments.

There is a Madame de Beaumont who has lately written a very pretty
novel, called "Lettres du Marquis du Roselle." It is imitated, too, from
an English standard, and in my opinion a most woful one; I mean the
works of Richardson, who wrote those deplorably tedious lamentations,