"I consulted with the Chevalier Macdonald, (who, by the bye, is here in great vogue, not for his gallantries, like some others who shall be nameless, but for his parts and knowledge;) I say I consulted with the Chevalier about writing a common letter to Eglinton in favour of Wilson. He told me it would be quite useless. Eglinton would give that kirk and every thing else to the tenth cousin of the tenth cousin of a voter in the shire of Ayr, rather than to the most intimate friend he has in the world. Je baise les mains de Madame Carlyle avec tout l'empressement possible.
"Who, by the bye, I believe is not a doctor, though highly worthy from his piety and learning to be one; then Mr. Ferguson, I think I have nothing in particular to say to you, except that I am glad of the change of your class, because you desired it, and because it fitted Russell. For otherwise I should have liked better the other science. The news of your great success in teaching has reached me in Paris, and has given me pleasure; but I fear for your health from all these sudden and violent applications. Ah, that you could learn something, dear Ferguson, of the courteous, and caressing, and open manners of this country. I should not then have been to learn for the first time, (as I did lately from General Clark,) that you have not been altogether ungrateful to me, and that you bear me some good will, and that you sometimes regret my absence. Why should your method of living with me have borne so little the appearance of those sentiments?
"Many people who read English have got your dissertation on Fingal, which they admire extremely: a very good critic told me lately that it was incomparably the best piece of criticism in the English language; a self-evident truth to me. I met also with many admirers of Fingal; but many also doubt of its authenticity. The Chevalier Macdonald is of use to me in supporting the argument, from his personal knowledge of facts. I cannot, however, but allow that the whole is strange, passing strange.
"You seem to wish that I should give you some general accounts of this country. Shall I begin with the points in which it most differs from England, viz., the general regard paid to genius and learning; the universal and professed, though decent, gallantry to the fair sex; or the almost universal contempt of all religion among both sexes, and among all ranks of men? Or shall I mention the points in which the French begin to concur with the English,--their love of liberty, for instance? Or shall I give you some remarkable anecdotes of the great men who, at present, adorn French literature? Perhaps you would wish me to run over all these topics successively. Alas! there is not one that would not fill several sheets of paper with curious circumstances, and I am the most lazy writer of letters in the world: however, I must say something on these heads; and, first, of the first:--