natural, more true, more according to our feelings, than when in this philofophic age, every fchool-boy thinks himself a prodigy, because he can repeat after his mafter that the earth is round?

I am at prefent with the Prince at one of his hunting-lodges. He is an honeft and unaffected man, and I am very well pleafed with him: what I diflike, is his talking of things which he has only read or heard of, and always exactly under the fame point of view that they have been presented to him. I am forry to fay that he values my understanding and talents much more

highly than that mind, for which alone I value myself-which alone is the fource of talents, of happiness,

of misery, of every thing

which

makes me all I am, and is folely mine. Any body may know all that I know.

LETTER LI.

May 25.

I

HAD a scheme in my head,

which I intended to conceal from you till it was accomplished ;-now that it has failed I may as well tell it to you. I had a mind to go into the army; I had long been defirous

of it, and it was my chief reason for coming here with the Prince. He is a general in the fervice of the As we were walking juft

now, I communicated my defign to him he did not approve it; and it would have been madness not to

have yielded to his reafon.

LETTER LII.

June 11.

AY what you please, I can stay

SAY

in this place no longer. What should I do here? I am weary of it. The Prince, it is true, treats me in all refpects as his equal, but ftill I

am

am not at my ease here. Befides, we are at bottom very different men. He has a good understanding, but quite of the common kind; and the pleasure I have in his conversation, is only fuch as I receive from reading a well-written book. I fhall stay a week more here, and then travel about again. What I have done beft, fince I came to this place, are fome drawings. The Prince has fome tafte for the arts, and would have more, if it was not cramped by cold rules and technical terms. I often lofe all patience, when with a glowing imagination I am giving to art and nature the most lively expref

fion, and he ftops me with learned criticifms, upon which he highly values himself.

June 18.

WHERE am I going? I will

tell you in confidence: I

am obliged to continue here a fortpight longer; after that, I thought it would be expedient for me to fee the mines of But 'tis no fuch

thing; I only deceive myself: the real truth is, that I wish to be near Charlotte again. I am not the dupe of my heart, but I obey its dictates.

LETTER