I write, Fairfax, according to promise, to inform you that I have been a fortnight in France, and four days in this city. The tract of country over which I have passed, within these three months, is considerable. From Naples to Rome; from Rome to Florence; from Florence to Venice, where we spent our carnival; from Venice to Modena, Parma, and Genoa; from thence to Turin; from Turin to Geneva; then, turning to the left, to Lyons; and from Lyons to Paris. Objects have passed before me in such a rapid succession, that the time I have spent abroad, though not more than a year and a half, appears something like a life. The sight of the proud Alps, which boldly look eternity in the face, imparts a sensation of length of time wholly inadequate to the few hours that are employed in passing them. The labour up is a kind of age; and the swift descent is like falling from the clouds, once more to become an inhabitant of earth. Here at Paris I half fancy myself at home. And yet, to timid people who have never beheld the ocean, and who are informed that seas divide France and England, Paris appears to be at an unattainable distance. Every thing is relative in this world; great or small near or distant only by comparison. The traveller who should have passed the deserts, and suffered all the perils all the emotions of a journey from Bengal by land, would think himself much nearer home, at Naples, than I do, coming from Naples, at Paris: and those who have sailed round the world seem satisfied that their labour is within a hair's breadth of being at an end, when they arrive, on their return, at the Cape of Good Hope. You, Fairfax, have frequently asked me to give you accounts of this and that place, of the things I have seen, and of the observations I have made. But I have more frequently put the same kind of questions to myself, and never yet could return a satisfactory answer. I have seen people whose manners are so different from those of my own country, that I have seemed to act with them from a kind of conviction of their being of another species. Yet a moment's consideration undeceives me: I find them to be mere men. Men of different habits, indeed, but actuated by the same passions, the same desire of self-gratification. Yes, Fairfax, the sun moon and stars make their appearance, in Italy, as regularly as in England; nay much more so, for there is not a tenth part of the intervening clouds.