T O

WILLIAM DUNCOMBE, Efq.

LETTER I.

SIR,

Lyons, October zd, 1754.

Muft refer you to your maps,

I if

will read this letter, and in my future letters I fhall probably talk to you of roads and hills that are not to be found upon record, unless taken notice of in one of the vast volumes of Atlaffes. If you are wearied in the journey, it is your own fault remember you were pofitively refolved upon a correfpondence with one of the Appennigena. Your fon is young, and can undauntedly climb even to the top of Parnaffus. Pray take

him with

you, if you ftill hold your refolution of following me into Italy. I had fo often beheld the gaieties of Paris, and they had made fo fmall an impreffion on my heart, that I had no defire to see them again. We therefore immediately ftruck out of the Paris road, and paffing from Calais through Artois into French Flanders, we refted ourselves at Lifle. The town of Lifle has nothing in it remarkably curious. The great fquare (La Place) is very handsome and very large; however, not equal in fize to Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. Their houfes are of ftone, fix or seven ftories high, built entirely in the French manner, which, by want of all kind of proportion, by windows filled with small panes of thick, yellow, muddy glass, by an aukward fort of ornament, like and very unlike a pediment on the on the top, have a difagreeable appearance to an English eye. The people themselves feem to poffefs a happy mixture between the excess of French

French gaiety, and the forbidding referve of English fhynefs. The men are genteel and well bred, the women modeft and lively; but the men, as throughout France, are generally very thin, and the women exceffively fat.

I had been twice before in the Pais bas, and was ftruck with reverence a third time by the fight of archbishop Fenelon's monument at Cambray. It is modeft, plain, and a proper emblem of his character. It is placed in the cathedral, which is large and extremely dark, fo dark that I could not read monfieur de Fenelon's epitaph; but his bust, of white marble, carries in it a great resemblance of those prints and pictures which I have feen of him. Humility, goodness, and religion, appear very strong characteristics in his counte

nance.

Over against the cathedral is another church, built within these ten years, and dedicated to St. Hubert, the patron of hunting: his bones are, or are fuppofed to B 2

be,

be, inclosed within a very rich shrine under the high altar. The edifice itself is in the true style of Roman architecture. The pillars are of a beautiful white freeftone. The floor is of marble. The church is light, airy, and chearful. It joins to a very rich abbey. Every spot belonging to it appears opulent and profperous, while the cathedral looks gloomy, defolate, and ruinous. Archbishop Fenelon's memory is still held in the highest veneration. The prefent archbishop is fpoken of flightly, and with a degree of dif respect, if not of contempt. He lives entirely at Paris, and feldom vifits his fee.

I must now carry you out of Flanders, through a part of Picardy, and a corner of the isle of France (Laon) to Rheims in Champagne. The cathedral of Rheims is a pile of Gothic architecture, almost twice as large as St. Peter's at Westminster. Mr. Addifon judiciously obferves, that "if the "barbarous buildings had been executed " in a true and just style, they would

"have appeared as miracles of architec "ture to fucceeding ages." The front of this ftupendous church confifts of a vaft number of statues: Saints in miniature, placed in little niches, and in exact spaces; fo that the eye is pleased and fhocked at the fame time. Magnificence is mixed with littlenefs, grandeur with meanness, proportion with disproportion; confequently it creates in our thoughts an uneafy mixture of admiration and contempt. The painted windows are all perfect, and the fun has a glorious effect upon the variety of their colours.

The kings of France are constantly crowned at Rheims. The ceremony, I dare fay, is much more brilliant, though not more magnificent, than the English coronations in Westminster abbey. The French are formed for gaiety, fhew, and oftentation; the English for dignity seriousness, and compofure. The former follow nature, they are genteel, and perfectly well adapted to all scenes of vanity.

B 3.