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.