162 
give us a length of years, how delightful will it be to 
read them over together some years hence, when 
the business and hurry of your profession, and works 
of greater consequence, in both the lines of physic 
and natural history, may have almost made you 
forget your juvenile performances! There is how- 
ever a freedom of style and spiritedness of compo- 
sition which appears in both the translations, that 
I would wish you to cultivate : they have been much 
admired by everybody who has seen the transla- 
tions, and they give to them an appearance of ori- 
ginality which makes me very desirous that you 
should cultivate the same style in original compo- 
sitions. 
Believe me, dear Sir, 
Yours most affectionately and sincerely, 
THos. WoopwaRD. 
J. EL. Smith to his Father. 
Honoured Sir, Paris, August 21st, 1786. 
On Sunday, August 6th, I went with my friend 
Broussonet to Versailles, which I need not describe 
to you at present: I shall only say it is more su- 
perb than I had an idea of; but it is tiresome, and 
not pleasing (I mean the garden). Saw the King 
and most of the family, but the Queen was in bed. 
The daubing of the ladies’ cheeks is beyond concep- 
tion; nature is quite out of the question : old hags, 
ugly beyond what you can conceive, (for we have 
very inadequate ideas of what an ugly woman is in 
England,) are dressed like girls, in the most tawdry 
colours, and have on each cheek a broad dab of the 
