There is not a town in all France , which, in my opinion, looks better in the map, than Montreuil ;⸺I own, it does not look so well in the book of post-roads; but when you come to see it—to be sure it looks most pitifully.
There is one thing, however, in it at present very handsome; and that is, the innkeeper’s daughter: She has been eighteen months at Amiens , and six at Paris , in going through her classes; so knits, and sews, and dances, and does the little coquetries very well.⸺
—A slut! in running them over within these five minutes that I have stood looking at her, she has let fall at least a dozen loops in a white thread stocking⸺yes, yes—I see, you cunning gipsy!—’tis long and taper—you need not pin it to your knee—and that ’tis your own—and fits you exactly.⸺
⸺That Nature should have told this creature a word about a statue’s thumb !
—But as this sample is worth all their thumbs⸺besides, I have her thumbs and fingers in at the bargain, if they can be any guide to me,—and as Janatone withal (for that is her name) stands so well for a drawing⸺may I never draw more, or rather may I draw like a draught-horse, by main strength all the days of my life,—if I do not draw her in all her proportions, and with as determined a pencil, as if I had her in the wettest drapery.⸺
—But your worships choose rather that I give you the length, breadth, and perpendicular height of the great parish-church, or drawing of the façade of the abbey of Saint Austerberte which has been