LETTER XVIII.

Geneva.

I found myself so much hurried during the last week of my stay at Paris, that it was not in my power to write to you.

Ten thousand little affairs, which might have been arranged much better, and performed with more ease, had they been transacted as they occurred, were all crowded, by the slothful demon of procrastination, into the last bustling week, and executed in an imperfect manner.

I have often admired, without being able perfectly to imitate, those who have the happy talent of intermingling business with amusement.

Pleasure and business contrast and give a relish to each other, like day and night, the constant vicissitudes of which are far more delightful than an uninterrupted half year of either would be.

To pass life in the most agreeable manner, one ought not to be so much a man of pleasure as to postpone any necessary business; nor so much a man of business as to despise elegant amusement. A proper mixture of both forms a more infallible specific against tedium and fatigue, than a constant regimen of the most pleasant of the two.

As soon as I found the D—— of H—— disposed to leave Paris, I made the necessary arrangements for our departure, and a few days after we began our journey.

Passing through Dijon, Chalons, Macon, and a country delightful to behold, but tedious to describe, we arrived on the fourth day at Lyons.

After Paris, Lyons is the most magnificent town in France, enlivened by industry, enriched by commerce, beautified by wealth, and by its situation, in the middle of a fertile country, and at the confluence of the Saone and the Rhone. The numbers of inhabitants are estimated at 200,000. The theatre is accounted the finest in France, and all the luxuries in Paris are to be found at Lyons, though not in equal perfection.

The manners and conversation of merchants and manufacturers have been generally considered as peculiar to themselves. It is very certain that there is a striking difference in these particulars between the inhabitants of all the manufacturing and commercial towns of Britain, and those of Westminster. I could not remark the same difference between the manners and address of the people of Lyons and the courtiers of Versailles itself.

There appeared to me a wonderful similitude between the two. It is probable, however, that a Frenchman would perceive a difference where I could not. A foreigner does not observe the different accents in which an Englishman, a Scotchman, and an Irishman speak English; neither perhaps does he observe any difference between the manners and address of the inhabitants of Bristol, and those of Grosvenor-square, though all these are obvious to a native of England.

After a short stay at Lyons, we proceeded to Geneva, and here we have remained these three weeks, without feeling the smallest inclination to shift the scene. That I should wish to remain here is no way surprising, but it was hardly to be expected that the D—— of H—— would have been of the same mind.—Fortunately, however, this is the case.—I know no place on the continent to which we could go with any probability of gaining by the change: The opportunities of improvement here are many, the amusements are few in number, and of a moderate kind: The hours glide along very smoothly, and though they are not always quickened by pleasure, they are unretarded by languor and unruffled by remorse.

As for myself, I have been so very often and so miserably disappointed in my hopes of happiness by change, that I shall not, without some powerful motive, incline to forego my present state of content, for the chance of more exquisite enjoyments in a different place or situation.

I have at length learnt by my own experience (for not one in twenty profits by the experience of others), that one great source of vexation proceeds from our indulging too sanguine hopes of enjoyment from the blessings we expect, and too much indifference for those we possess. We scorn a thousand sources of satisfaction which we might have had in the interim, and permit our comfort to be disturbed, and our time to pass unenjoyed, from impatience for some imagined pleasure at a distance, which we may perhaps never obtain, or which, when obtained, may change its nature, and be no longer pleasure. Young says,

The present moment, like a wife, we shun,

And ne’er enjoy, because it is our own.

The devil thus cheats men both out of the enjoyment of this life and of that which is to come, making us in the first place prefer the pleasures of this life to those of a future state, and then continually prefer future pleasures in this life to those which are present.

The sum of all these apophthegms amounts to this:—We shall certainly remain at Geneva till we become more tired of it than at present.