Avignon 205 



letters, and another in the wall adjoining, with the armorial of 

 the family of Sade. Now incredible is the power of great 

 talents when employed in delineating passions common to the 

 human race. How many millions of women, fair as Laura, have 

 been beloved as tenderly — but, wanting a Petrarch to illustrate 

 the passion, have lived and died in oblivion! whilst his lines, not 

 written to die, conduct thousands under the impulse of feelings, 

 which genius only can excite, to mingle in idea their m.elancholy 

 sighs with those of the poet who consecrated these remains to 

 immortahty! — There is a monument of the brave Crillon in 

 the same church; and I saw other churches and pictures — but 

 Petrarch and Laura are predominant at Avignon.— 19 miles. 



2Sth. Wait upon P^re Brouillony, provincial visitor, who, 

 with great politeness, procured me the information I wished by 

 introducing me to some gentlemen understanding in agriculture. 

 From the rock of the legate's palace there is one of the finest views 

 of the windings of the Rhone that is to be seen: it forms two 

 considerable islands which, with the rest of the plain, richly 

 watered, cultivated, and covered with mulberries, ohves, and 

 fruit-trees, have a fine boundary in the mountains of Provence, 

 Dauphine, and Languedoc. — The circular road fine. I was 

 struck with the resemblance between the women here and in 

 England. It did not at once occur in what it consisted ; but it is 

 their caps ; they dress their heads quite different from the French 

 women. A better particularity is there being no wooden shoes 

 here, nor, as I have seen, in Provence.^ — I have often complained 

 of the stupid ignorance I met with at table d'hotes. Here, if 

 possible, it has been worse than common. The politeness of the 

 French is proverbial, but it never could arise from the manners of 

 the classes that frequent these tables. Not one time in forty will 

 a foreigner, as such, receive the least mark of attention. The 

 only political idea here is that if the English should attack France 

 they have a million of men in arms to receive them ; and their 

 ignorance seems to know no distinction between men in arms in 

 their towns and villages, or in action without the kingdom. 

 They conceive, as Sterne observes, much better than they com- 

 bine: I put some questions to them, but in vain: I asked if the 

 union of a rusty firelock and a bourgeois made a soldier. — I 



* We were, like you, struck with the resemblance of the women at 

 Avignon to those of England, but not for the reason you give; it appeared 

 to us to originate from their complexions being naturally so much better 

 than that of the other French women, more than their head-dress, which 

 differs as much from ours, as it does from the Trench. — Note by a female 

 friend. 



