78 



Travels in France 



to the end required, in union with that elegance which is con- 

 sistent with use, and that magnificence which results from 

 stabihty and duration are the criteria of pubUc edifices, I know 

 nothing that equals it :■ — it has but one fault, and that is situation ; 

 it should have been upon the banks of the river for the con- 

 venience of unloading barges without land carriage. In the 

 evening, to the Comedie Italiefine, the edifice fine; and the 

 whole quarter regular and new built, a private speculation of 

 the Duke de Choiseul, whose family has a box entailed for ever. 

 — L Aimant jalotix. Here is a young singer. Mademoiselle 

 Renard, with so sweet a voice that if she sung Italian, and had 

 been taught in Italy, would have made a delicious performer. 



To the tomb of Cardinal de Richefieu, which is a noble produc- 

 tion of genius: by far the finest statue I have seen. Nothing 

 can be wished more easy and graceful than the attitude of the 

 cardinal, nor more expressive nature than the figure of weeping 

 science. Dine with my friend at the Palais Royale, at a coffee- 

 house; well-dressed people; everything clean, good, and well 

 served : but here, as everywhere else, you pay a good price for 

 good things ; we ought never to forget that a low price for bad 

 things is not cheapness. In the evening to VEcole des Peres. 

 at the Comedie Francaise, a crying larmoyant thing. This 

 theatre, the principal one at Paris, is a fine building, with a 

 magnificent portico. After the circular theatres of France 

 how can any one relish our ill-contrived oblong holes of London? 



i6th. To Monsieur Lavoisier, by appointment. Madame 

 Lavoisier, a lively, sensible, scientific lady, had prepared a 

 dejeune Anglois of tea and coffee, but her conversation on Mr. 

 Kirwan's Essay on Phlogiston, which she is translating from 

 the English, and on other subjects, which a woman of under- 

 standing that works with her husband in his laboratory knows 

 how to adorn, was the best repast. That apartment, the opera- 

 tions of which have been rendered so interesting to the philo- 

 sophical world, I had pleasure in viewing. In the apparatus for 

 aerial experiments nothing makes so great a figure as the machine 

 for burning inflammable and vital air to make or deposit 

 water; it is a splendid machine. Three vessels are held in sus- 

 pension with indexes for marking the immediate variations of 

 their weights ; two that are as large as half-hogsheads contain 

 the one inflammable, the other the vital air, and a tube of 

 communication passes to the third, where the two airs unite and 

 burn; by contrivances, too complex to describe without plates, 

 the loss of weight of the two airs, as indicated by their respective 



