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.