ABSTRACT

I Am just returned from a visit to Madame Sillery, whose works on education are so well known and so justly esteemed in England, and who received me with the most engaging politeness. Surely the French are unrivalled in the arts of pleasing; in the power of uniting with the most polished elegance of manners, that at-tentive kindness which seems to flow warm from the heart, and which, while it sooths our vanity, secures our affections. Madame Sillery and her pupils are at present at St. Leu, a beautiful spot in the rich valley of Montmorenci. Mons. d’Orleans has certainly conferred a most essential 23obligation upon his children, by placing them under the care of this lady. I never met with young people more amiable in their dispositions, or more charming in their manners, which are equally remote from arrogance, and from those efforts of condescension which I have seen some great people make, with much difficulty to themselves, and much offence to others. The Princess, who is thirteen years of age, has a countenance of the sweetest expression, and appears to me to be Adelaide the heroine of Madame Sillery’s Letters on education, personified. The three princes, though under Madame Sillery’s super-intendence, have also preceptors who live in the house, and assist in their education. The eldest prince, Mons. de Chartres, is nearly eighteen years of age, and his attentive politeness formed a striking contrast in my mind, to the manners of those fashionable gentlemen in a certain great metropolis, who consider apathy and negligence as the test of good breeding. But if I was pleased with the manners of this young Prince, I was still more delighted to find him a confirmed friend to the new constitution of France, and willing, with the enthusiasm of a young and ardent mind, to renounce the splendour of his titles for the general good. When he heard that the sacrifice of fortune also was required, and that the immense property, which he had been taught to consider as his inheritance, was to be divided with his brothers, he embraced them with the utmost affection, declaring that he should rejoice in such a division. To find a democratic Prince, was somewhat singular: I was much less surprized that Madame Sillery had 24adopted sentiments which are so congenial to an enlarged and comprehensive mind. This lady I have called Sillery, because it is the name by which she is known in England: but, since the decree of the National Assembly, abolishing the nobility, she has renounced with her title the name of Sillery, and has taken that of Brulart. She talked to me of the distinctions of rank, in the spirit of philosophy, and ridiculed the absurdity of converting the rewards of personal merit into the inheritance of those who had perhaps so little claim to honours, that they were a sort of oblique reproach on their character and conduct. There may be arguments against hereditary rank sufficiently convincing to such an understanding’s Madame Brulart’s: but I know some French ladies who entertain very different notions on this subject; who fee no impropriety in the establishments of nobility; and who have carried their love of aristocratical rights so far as to keep their beds, in a fit of despondency, upon being obliged to relinquish the agreeable epithets of Comtesse or Marquise, to which their ears had been so long accustomed.