What I am surprized at the most, however, is, that the very circumstance, which usually prejudices foreigners in favour of the French, should give you disgust. I mean their polite reception of strangers, and their general turn of conversation; tho’ by your own confession, you have met with great civility. I have not forgot your distinction between Paris in particular, and great cities in general; but I see plainly, that, without knowing precisely what belongs to either, you censure without considering whether it be truth or slander. But, however, this be, the French are my favourites, and you don’t at all oblige me in reviling them. It is to the many excellent writings France has produced, that I am indebted for most of those lessons, by which we have together profited. If Switzerland is emerged from its ancient barbarity, to whom is it obliged? the two greatest and most virtuous men in modern story, Catinat and Fenelon, were both Frenchmen. Henry the fourth, the good king, whose character I admire, was a Frenchman. If France be not the country of liberty, it is properly that of men; a superior advantage in the eyes of a philosopher to that of licentious freedom. Hospitable, protectors of the stranger, the French overlook real insult, and a man would be pelted in London for saying half so much against the English, as the French will bear at Paris. My father, who hath spent the greatest part of his life in France, never speaks but with rapture of this agreeable people. If he has spilt his blood in the service of its king, he has not been forgotten in his retirement, but is still honoured by royal beneficence. Hence, I think myself in some degree interested in the glory of a nation, to which that of my father is indebted. If the people of all nations, my friend, have their good and ill qualities, you ought surely to pay the same regard to that impartiality which praises, as to that which blames them.