and have a little more respect for English _heads_ than I had.

The women do not seem of the same country: if they are less gay than
they were, they are more informed, enough to make them very conversable.
I know six or seven with very superior understandings; some of them with
wit, or with softness, or very good sense.

[Illustration: THOMAS GRAY, THE POET.

_From a drawing in the National Portrait Gallery by James Basire, after
a sketch by Gray's friend and biographer, the Rev. William Mason._]

Madame Geoffrin, of whom you have heard much, is an extraordinary woman,
with more common sense than I almost ever met with. Great quickness in
discovering characters, penetration in going to the bottom of them, and
a pencil that never fails in a likeness--seldom a favourable one. She
exacts and preserves, spite of her birth and their nonsensical
prejudices about nobility, great court and attention. This she acquires
by a thousand little arts and offices of friendship: and by a freedom
and severity, which seem to be her sole end of drawing a concourse to
her; for she insists on scolding those she inveigles to her. She has
little taste and less knowledge, but protects artisans and authors, and
courts a few people to have the credit of serving her dependents. She
was bred under the famous Madame Tencin,[1] who advised her never to
refuse any man; for, said her mistress, though nine in ten should not
care a farthing for you, the tenth may live to be an useful friend. She
did not adopt or reject the whole plan, but fully retained the purport
of the maxim. In short, she is an epitome of empire, subsisting by
rewards and punishments. Her great enemy, Madame du Deffand,[2] was for
a short time mistress of the Regent, is now very old and stoneblind, but