Chapter 362

Paris, Sept. 8, 1769. (page 555)

T'other night, at the Duchess of Choiseul's at supper, the intendant of Rouen asked me, if we have roads of communication all over England and Scotland'@--I suppose he thinks that in general we inhabit trackless forests and wild mountains, and that once a year a few legislators come to Paris to learn the arts of civil life, as to sow corn, plant vines, and make operas. If this letter should contrive to scramble through that desert Yorkshire, where your lordship has attempted to improve a dreary hill and uncultivated vale, you will find I remember your commands of writing from this capital of the world, whither I am come for the benefit of my country, and where I am intensely studying those laws and that beautiful frame of government, which can alone render a nation happy, great, and flourishing; where lettres de cachet soften manners, and a proper distribution of luxury and beggary ensures a common felicity. As we have a prodigious number of students in legislature of both sexes here at present, I will not anticipate their discoveries; but as your particular friend, will communicate a rare improvement on nature, which these great philosophers have made, and which would add considerable beauties to those parts which your lordship has already recovered from the waste, and taught to look a little like a Christian country. The secret is very simple, and yet demanded the effort of a mighty genius to strike it out. It is nothing but this: trees ought to be educated as much as men, and are strange awkward productions when not taught to hold themselves upright or bow on proper occasions. The academy de belles-lettres have even offered a prize for the man that shall recover the long lost art of an ancient Greek, called le sieur Orph`ee, who instituted a dancing-school for plants, and gave a magnificent ball on the birth of the Dauphin of Thrace, which was performed entirely by forest-trees. In this whole kingdom there is no such thing as seeing a tree that is not well-behaved. They are first stripped up and then cut down; and you would as soon meet a man with his hair about his ears as an oak or ash. As the weather is very hot now, and the soil chalk, and the dust white, I assure you it is very difficult, powdered as both are all over, to distinguish a tree from a hairdresser. Lest this should sound like a travelling hyperbole, I must advertise your lordship, that there is little difference in their heights; for, a tree of thirty years' growth being liable to be marked as royal timber, the proprietors take care not to let their trees live to the age of being enlisted, but burn them, and plant others as often almost as they change their fashions. This gives an air of perpetual youth to the face of the country, and if adopted by us would realize Mr. Addison's visions, and

"Make our bleak rocks and barren mountains smile."

What other remarks I have made in my indefatigable search after knowledge must be reserved to a future opportunity; but as your lordship is my friend, I may venture to say without vanity to You, that Solon nor any Of the ancient philosophers who travelled to Egypt in quest of religions. mysteries, laws, and fables, never sat up so late with the ladies and priests and presidents de parlement at Memphis, as I do here--and consequently were not half so well qualified as I am to new-model a commonwealth. I have learned how to make remonstrances, and how to answer them. The latter, it seems, is a science much wanted in my own country(1090)--and yet it is as easy and obvious as their treatment of trees, and not very unlike it. It was delivered many years ago in an oracular sentence of my namesake, "Odi profanum vulgus, et arceo." You must drive away the vulgar, and you must have an hundred and fifty thousand men to drive them away with--that is all. I do not wonder the intendant of Rouen thinks we are still in a state of barbarism, when we are ignorant of the very rudiments of government.

The Duke and Duchess of Richmond have been here a few days, and are gone to Aubign`e. I do not think him at all well, and am exceedingly concerned for it; as I know no man who has more estimable qualities. They return by the end of the month. I am fluctuating whether I shall not return with them, as they have pressed me to do, through Holland. I never was there, and could never go so agreeably; but then it would protract my absence three weeks, and I am impatient to be in my own cave, notwithstanding the wisdom I imbibe every day. But one cannot sacrifice one's self wholly to the public: Titus and Wilkes have now and then lost a day. Adieu, my dear lord! Be assured that I shall not disdain yours and Lady Strafford's conversation, though you have nothing but the goodness of your hearts, and the simplicity of your manners, to recommend you to the more enlightened understanding of your old friend.

(1090) Alluding to the number of remonstrances, under the name of petitions, which were presented this year from the livery of London, and many other corporate bodies, on the subject of the Middlesex election.