You will say, I often describe the habits and manners of a nation so
frequently visited, as though I were writing from Kamschatka or Japan;
yet it is certain, as I have remarked above, that those who are merely
itinerant have not opportunities of observing the modes of familiar life
so well as one who is stationary, and travellers are in general too much
occupied by more important observations to enter into the minute and
trifling details which are the subject of my communications to you. But
if your attention be sometimes fatigued by occurrences or relations too
well known, or of too little consequence to be interesting, I claim some
merit in never having once described the proportions of a building, nor
given you the history of a town; and I might have contrived as well to
tax your patience by an erudite description, as a superficial reflection,
or a female remark. The truth is, my pen is generally guided by
circumstances as they rise, and my ideas have seldom any deeper origin
than the scene before me. I have no books here, and I am apt to think if
professed travellers were deprived of this resource, many learned
etymologies and much profound compilation would be lost to the modern
reader.
The insurgents of La Vendee continue to have frequent and decided
successes, but the insurrections in the other departments languish. The
avowed object of liberating the Convention is not calculated to draw
adherents, and if any better purpose be intended, while a faction are the
promoters of it, it will be regarded with too much suspicion to procure
any effectual movement.
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