"Altogether, your friend's Journal is a very formidable production.
Alas! our dearly beloved countrymen have only discovered that they
are tired, and not that they are tiresome; and I suspect that the
communication of the latter unpleasant verity will not be better
received than truths usually are. I have read the whole with great
attention and instruction. I am too good a patriot to say
_pleasure_--at least I won't say so, whatever I may think. I showed
it (I hope no breach of confidence) to a young Italian lady of rank,
_très instruite_ also; and who passes, or passed, for being one of
the three most celebrated belles in the district of Italy, where her
family and connections resided in less troublesome times as to
politics, (which is not Genoa, by the way,) and she was delighted
with it, and says that she has derived a better notion of English
society from it than from all Madame de Staël's metaphysical
disputations on the same subject, in her work on the Revolution. I
beg that you will thank the young philosopher, and make my
compliments to Lady B. and her sister.

"Believe me your very obliged and faithful

"N. B.

"P.S. There is a rumour in letters of some disturbance or complot in
the French Pyrenean army--generals suspected or dismissed, and
ministers of war travelling to see what's the matter. 'Marry (as
David says), this hath an angry favour.'

"Tell Count ---- that some of the names are not quite intelligible,
especially of the clubs; he speaks of _Watts_--perhaps he is right,
but in my time _Watiers_ was the Dandy Club, of which (though no