The men appear to have paid still less court to the graces. They
are a robust, healthy race, distinguished for their common sense and
turn for humour, rather than for wit or sentiment. I include not,
as you may suppose, in this general character, some of the nobility
and officers, who having travelled, are polite and well informed.

I must own to you that the lower class of people here amuse and
interest me much more than the middling, with their apish good
breeding and prejudices. The sympathy and frankness of heart
conspicuous in the peasantry produces even a simple gracefulness of
deportment which has frequently struck me as very picturesque; I
have often also been touched by their extreme desire to oblige me,
when I could not explain my wants, and by their earnest manner of
expressing that desire. There is such a charm in tenderness! It is
so delightful to love our fellow-creatures, and meet the honest
affections as they break forth. Still, my good friend, I begin to
think that I should not like to live continually in the country with
people whose minds have such a narrow range. My heart would
frequently be interested; but my mind would languish for more
companionable society.

The beauties of nature appear to me now even more alluring than in
my youth, because my intercourse with the world has formed without
vitiating my taste. But, with respect to the inhabitants of the
country, my fancy has probably, when disgusted with artificial
manners, solaced itself by joining the advantages of cultivation
with the interesting sincerity of innocence, forgetting the
lassitude that ignorance will naturally produce. I like to see
animals sporting, and sympathise in their pains and pleasures.
Still I love sometimes to view the human face divine, and trace the