attaching Mr. Walpole to her as a lover, than she had of the possibility of any one suspecting her of such an intention; and indulged her lively feelings, and the violent fancy she had taken for his conversation and character, in every expression of admiration and attachment, which she really felt, and which she never supposed capable of misinterpretation. By himself they were not misinterpreted; but he seems to have had ever before his eyes a very unnecessary dread of their being so by others a fear lest Mad. du Deffand's extreme partiality, and high opinion should expose him to suspicions of entertaining the same opinion of himself, or of its leading her to some extravagant mark of attachment; and all this, he persuaded himself, was to be exposed in their letters to all the clerks of the Post-office at Paris, and all the idlers at Versailles.

This accounts for the ungracious language in which he often replied to the im

portunities of her anxious affection; a language so foreign to his heart, and so contrary to his own habits in friendship. This too accounts for his constantly repressing on her part all effusions of sentiment, all disquisitions on the human heart, and all communications of its vexations, weaknesses, and pains. She frequently, and with much reason, laments the shackles which Mr. Walpole imposed on their correspondence, and is aware that they often reduce her letters to a dry enumeration of insignificant facts; complaints of misapprehended sentiments, and repetitions of the few subjects on which she was allowed to touch with impunity. These repetitions the Editor has endeavoured to sup press as much as was thought compatible with the preservation of the original character of the Letters and of their Writer.

The frequent intercourse which subsisted between London and Paris during the fifteen years peace with France, from the year

1763 to the year 1778, luckily gave many opportunities for the conveyance of letters by private hands; of these opportunities Mad. du Deffand often availed herself; and in the letters thus conveyed, there will be found some curious, because undoubtedly authentic details relative to the elevation of Mad. du Barri, the disgrace of the Duc de Choiseul, and the subsequent destruction of the Parliaments, by the Chancellor Maupeou. The light in which these events were considered at the time, by the persons most immediately concerned in them, and by those living in their intimate society; the servility, and at the same time, the reluctance with which they were submitted to, shew, among many other prognostics, that the seeds of a great revolution were already beginning to germinate; to the growth of which its devoted victims alone continued stupidly and obstinately blind.

After a revolution, which has essentially altered the whole construction and habits

of society in France for these last twenty years, the younger part of the present generation in this country, who from their infancy have been hearing of little else than reports of French cruelty, French profligacy, and French victories, may begin to feel some curiosity about the private lives, manners, and characters of these people, before they were destined to new-model Europe, and astonish the whole civilized world by their crimes and their conquests.

The following Letters give many details of the society and amusements of what might, in every respect, deserve the name of the best company at Paris, during the latter part of the reign of Louis XV, and the beginning of that of his ill-fated successor;-in short, of the period immediately preceding the first decided convulsions of the revolution. In this point of view they will every day become more valuable, as it has been often justly observed,

that the characters and anecdotes of the times immediately anterior to our own, are those of which we know the least.

The Letters to Voltaire, subjoined to those addressed to Mr. Walpole, were all bequeathed to him by Mad. du Deffand, together with her MS. papers of every description, at her death, in 1780. Her whole correspondence with Voltaire was transcribed into a large volume; his letters to her were all printed in Beaumarchais' edition of his Works, in 1785. The public are here presented with some of her answers to those letters.

The descriptive portraits by Mad. du Deffand, of several persons of her intimate society, which follow the letters, Mr. Walpole thus characterizes, in a note inserted in the MS. book which contains the portraits:

"Some of the portraits drawn by Mad.. "du Deffand, in this book, are chef"d'œuvres, particularly those of the Du