abroad, and the Wests cannot leave him; so, as often as I am disposed for company, I dine there; the rest of my time passes in taking air and exercise, and now and then the relief of a book. I have chiefly applied myself to Davila's History of the Civil Wars of France; his language is clear, majestic, and noble, his reflections are fine, and the characters drawn in a masterly manner; he is reckoned a partial historian, too favourable to Catherine de Medicis, his country woman, and too much prejudiced against the Huguenots; certainly it is almost impossible to find an impartial and knowing historian. Such only can speak with any certainty of councils, who have been privy to them, and of actions, who have been present at them, and from persons thus engaged, can one expect impartiality? The monk in his cell, and the student in his college, may be impartial, but they are unknowing too. The good that happens in this world, is oftener brought about by the balance of vices, than operation of virtues, and thus the vanity of the historian is a check to

his other passions, he must give a pretty faithful account, or he will fall into disesteem, and he must betray the councils, to shew his intimate acquaintance with them. Sully does not discover so much of Catherine's dissimulation as Davila ; one, indeed, calls that prudence, which the other terms base hypocrisy. But one does not want the historian to fix the term, one can do that for ones self. Every page of Davila is big with events; the mind has no time to languish, one is rather hurried from one great event to another; as soon as that infant warrior, that Mars in swathing clothes, (as Shakspeare calls Hotspur,) Henry of Navarre comes forth, one is awake and attentive wherever he appears, knowing how great a figure he will make in his maturer age. As a woman too, I have some pleasure in observing, that Henry the IVth seems to have owed his native fire, and the improvement of it, to his mother; she had not the satisfaction of seeing him placed on the throne of France, which would have given great pleasure to her ambitious spirit;

but she was so fierce an Huguenot, I know not whether she would have approved the means he took to get into quiet possession of it. However, she died before the massacre of St. Bartholomew, perhaps by the contrivance of the same spirit which brought about that horrid night, the blackest perhaps in the annals of time. I am under concern that you have not heard from me, as you may be alarmed about my health, which indeed has been uninterrupted, and such, that when I consider the poor condition in which I came hither, it amazes me. I thought myself gently sinking into the grave, distant perhaps, a year or two; but apparently on my journey thither, so much were my spirits and strength decayed, and, as Samson describes his case, nature in all her functions weary of herself; but I sleep and eat heartily, have great vigour of spirits, and really seem to myself, as if some magic operation had been wrought upon me; and I find my disorder has been all a mere nervous mimickry of disease. I cannot say but it counterfeited well,

but I do not design to be imposed upon, so as to give such faith to it as I did before I came hither this year. May health and happiness attend on all your footsteps! such are my hourly wishes. I am, my Dearest,

Your most faithful

and affectionate wife,

E. MONTAGU.

To the Same.

1753.

My Dearest,

I HAVE more thanks to return to you for your kind and generous attention to my health, than I can express. I am drinking the waters with all diligence, and they agree perfectly. Mr. Pitt, Mr. West, and his son, and Miss West, and the Dean of Exeter,* are going a tour to Maidstone, Canterbury, and Dover; they design to

* Dr. Lyttelton, afterwards Bishop of Carlisle.

see all the seats, parks, castles on the sea side, and other things worthy of notice : Mr. Pitt thinks the waters more beneficial after these intermissions, but as this place. is dull, he gives his days of leisure to the amusement of seeing places. I expect a very exact account of the things they have seen: Mr. Pitt has a correct taste, Mr. West a poetical imagination, and the Dean a love of antiquities, so amongst them one may learn the particulars of all the places they have visited. So various are the minds of men that the same object does not exist in the same manner in any two heads; so it is of faces, all see the same features, but our opinions of the countenance are different. As the world is furnished with variety, and life made up of it, I know not whether those persons who have some tincture of, and a little acquaintance with, all kinds of knowledge have not more pleasure than such as confine themselves to one branch, though certainly man's life and powers are so limited, a person cannot be master of more than one art or science; even paint