Scotland. At this time I saw but little of Lord Bolingbroke in private;
though, with his characteristic affectation, he took care that the load
of business with which he was really oppressed should not prevent his
enjoyment of all gayeties in public. And my indifference to the cause
of the Chevalier, in which he was so warmly engaged, threw a natural
restraint upon our conversation, and produced an involuntary coldness in
our intercourse: so impossible is it for men to be private friends who
differ on a public matter.

One evening I was engaged to meet a large party at a country-house about
forty miles from Paris. I went, and stayed some days. My horses had
accompanied me; and, when I left the chateau, I resolved to make the
journey to Paris on horseback. Accordingly, I ordered my carriage to
follow me, and attended by a single groom, commenced my expedition. It
was a beautiful still morning,--the first day of the first month of
autumn. I had proceeded about ten miles, when I fell in with an old
French officer. I remember,--though I never saw him but that once,--I
remember his face as if I had encountered it yesterday. It was thin and
long, and yellow enough to have served as a caricature rather than a
portrait of Don Quixote. He had a hook nose, and a long sharp chin; and
all the lines, wrinkles, curves, and furrows of which the human visage
is capable seemed to have met in his cheeks. Nevertheless, his eye was
bright and keen, his look alert, and his whole bearing firm, gallant,
and soldier-like. He was attired in a sort of military undress; wore a
mustachio, which, though thin and gray, was carefully curled; and at the
summit of a very respectable wig was perched a small cocked hat, adorned
with a black feather. He rode very upright in his saddle; and his
horse, a steady, stalwart quadruped of the Norman breed, with a terribly
long tail and a prodigious breadth of chest, put one stately leg before
another in a kind of trot, which, though it seemed, from its height of