Alas! I confess my heart is weak indeed; and I fear that all the power of friendship and philosophy combined will never strengthen it sufficiently. Oh, Gabrielle! how can I hope to obliterate from my soul that attachment which has marked the colour of my destiny for years? Yet such courage, such cruel courage is required of me, and of such I have boasted myself capable. Lady Leonora L----, my new friend, has, by all the English eloquence of virtue, obtained from me a promise, which, I fear, I shall not have the fortitude to keep--but I must make the attempt--Forbid R---- to write to me--Yes! I have written the words--Forbid R---- to write to me--Forbid him to think of me--I will do more--if possible I will forbid myself henceforward to think of him--to think of love--Adieu, my Gabrielle--All the illusions of life are over, and a dreary blank of future existence lies before me, terminated only by the grave. To-morrow I go to L---- Castle, with feelings which I can compare only to those of the unfortunate La Vallière when she renounced her lover, and resolved to bury herself in a cloister.--Alas! why have not I the resource of devotion? Your unhappy OLIVIA. * * * * * LETTER X. GENERAL B---- TO MR. L----. Publish my travels!--Not I, my dear friend. The world shall never have the pleasure of laughing at General B----‘s trip to Paris. Before a man sets about to inform others, he should have seen, not only the surface but the bottom of things; he should have had, not only a _vue d’oiseau_, but (to use a celebrated naval commander’s expression) a _vue de poisson_ of his subject. By this time you must have heard enough of the Louvre and the Tuilleries, and Versailles, and le petit Trianon, and St. Cloud--and you have had enough of pictures and statues; and you know all that can be known of Bonaparté, by seeing him at a review or a levee; and the fashionable beauties and _celebrated characters_ of the hour have all passed and repassed through the magic lantern. A fresh showman might make his figures a little more correct, or a little more in laughable caricature, but he could produce nothing new. Alas! there is nothing new under the sun. Nothing remains for the moderns, but to practise the oldest follies the newest ways. Would you, for the sake of your female friends, know the fashionable dress of a Parisian _elegante_, see Seneca on the transparent vestments of the Roman ladies, who, like these modern belles, were generous in the display of their charms to the public. No doubt these French republicanists act upon the true Spartan principle of modesty: they take the most efficacious method to prevent their influence from being too great over the imaginations of men, by renouncing all that insidious reserve which alone can render even beauty permanently dangerous.