D'Alembert is a very agreeable companion, and of irreproachable morals. By refusing great offers from the Czarina and the King of Prussia, he has shown himself above interest and vain ambition. He lives in an agreeable retreat at Paris, suitable to a man of letters. He has five pensions: one from the King of Prussia, one from the French King, one as member of the Academy of Sciences, one as member of the French Academy, and one from his own family. The whole amount of these is not six thousand livres a-year; on the half of which he lives decently, and gives the other half to poor people with whom he is connected. In a word, I scarce know a man, who, with some few exceptions, (for there must always be some exceptions,) is a better model of a _virtuous_ and _philosophical_ character. You see I venture still to join these two epithets as inseparable, and almost synonymous, though you seem inclined to regard them almost as incompatible. And here I have a strong inclination to say a few words in vindication, both of myself and my friends; venturing even to comprehend you in the number. What new prepossession has seized you, to beat in so outrageous a manner your nurses of Mount Helicon, and to join the outcry of the ignorant multitude against science and literature? For my part, I can scarce acknowledge any other ground of distinction between one age and another, between one nation and another, than their different progress in learning and the arts. I do not say between one man and another, because the qualities of the heart and temper, and natural understanding, are the most essential to the personal character; but being, I suppose, almost equal among nations and ages, do not serve to throw a peculiar lustre on any. You blame France for its fond admiration of men of genius; and there may no doubt be, in particular instances, a great ridicule in these affectations; but the sentiment, in general, was equally conspicuous in ancient Greece; in Rome, during its flourishing period; in modern Italy; and even, perhaps, in England about the beginning of this century. If the case be now otherwise, it is what we are to lament and be ashamed of. Our enemies will only infer, that we are a nation which was once, at best, but half civilized; and is now relapsing fast into barbarism, ignorance, and superstition. I beg you also to consider the great difference, in point of morals, between uncultivated and civilized ages. But I find I am launching out insensibly into an immense ocean of commonplace. I cut the matter, therefore, short, by declaring it as my opinion, that if you had been born a barbarian, and had every day cooked your dinner of horse flesh, by riding on it fifty miles