P.S. I have this moment received information that Sir Arthur St. Ives and his daughter arrived yesterday in the afternoon at Paris. I have heard that the daughter is the most beautiful woman in England, and that her wit is even superior to her beauty. I am very glad of the accident, for I have a great desire to see her. My mother's last was partly a letter of business, but chiefly of recommendation, particularly of the young lady: and in it was enclosed one from my sister, Louisa, which gives a very high character of her friend, Anna St. Ives. They have become acquainted since I have been abroad. The letter is loaded with advice to me, at which as you may well think I laugh. These girls, tied to their mother's apron-strings, pretend to advise a man who has seen the world! But vanity and conceit are strange propensities, that totally blind the eyes of their possessors. I have lived but little at home, but I always thought the young lady a forward imperious miss; yet I never before knew her so much on the stilts. I expect she will soon put on boots and buckskin, and horsewhip her fellows herself; for she improves apace. Once more farewell. LETTER XX _Anna Wenbourne St. Ives to Louisa Clifton_ _Paris, Hotel d'Espagne, Rue Guenegaude_, _Fauxbourg St. Germain_ After abundance of jolting in carriages, sea sickness, and such-like trifling accidents, incidental to us travellers, here we are at last, dear Louisa. My very first demand has been for pen ink and paper, to inform my kind friend of our safe arrival: though I am so giddy, after this post haste four day's hurry, that I scarcely can write a straight line. Neither do I know whether I have any thing to say; though I seemed to myself to have acquired an additional stock of ideas, at the very moment that I first beheld Calais and the coast of France. What is there, my dear, in the human mind, that induces us to think every thing which is unusual is little less than absurd? Is it prejudice, is it vanity, or is it a short and imperfect view; a want of discrimination? I could have laughed, but that I had some latent sense of my own folly, at the sight of a dozen French men and women, and two or three loitering monks, whom curiosity had drawn together upon the pier-head, to see us come into port. And what was my incitement to laughter?--It was the different cut of a coat. It was a silk bag, in which the hair was tied, an old sword, and a dangling pair of ruffles; which none of them suited with the poverty of the dress, and meagre appearance, of a person who seemed to strut and value himself upon such marks of distinction.