present ruinous state during the civil wars of Henry the Third; and yet,
in spite of the modern statues, and gaudy ornaments, which the
inhabitants have bestrewed to decorate their matchless fountain, the
Temple of Diana is still the greatest ornament it has to boast of.




LETTER XII.

MONTPELLIER.


Never was a traveller more disappointed than I was upon entering into
this renowned city; a city, the name of which my ears have been familiar
to, ever since I first heard of disease or medicine. I expected to find
it filled with palaces; and to perceive the superiority of the soft air
it is so celebrated for, above all other places; instead of which, I was
accompanied for many miles before I entered it with thousands of
Moschettos, which, in spite of all the hostilities we committed upon
them, made our faces, hands and legs, as bad in appearance as persons
just recovering from a plentiful crop of the small-pox, and infinitely
more miserable. Bad as these flies are in the West-Indies, I suffered
more in a few days from them at, and near Montpellier, than I did for
some years in Jamaica.

However fine and salubrious the air of this town might have been
formerly, it is far otherwise now; and it may be naturally accounted
for; the sea has retired from the coast, and has left three leagues of
marshy ground between it and the town, where the hot sun, and stagnated