Maria Edgeworth

“ We were told that he has often gone through similar fatigue, and in the evening, or an hour after, amused a company at dinner with cheerful, witty conversation: he is not a man of letters, but he has abilities and knowledge of the world. ”

“ It appears extraordinary that there should not be one little or mean-looking among a set of people who are not like soldiers chosen for their height, and as they must have come from different parts of France. I think there is a greater variety of sizes among the French than among us: if all the people who stand in the street of Edgeworthstown every Sunday were Frenchmen, you would see ten remarkably little for one that you see there, and ten remarkably tall. I think there are more remarkably tall men in Ireland than in England. ”

“ The Archbishop of Paris, who performed the chief part of the ceremony, is a man about eighty years of age, yet he had the strength to go through the fatigue which such a ceremony requires for three hours together in very great cold, and every action was performed with as much firmness as a man of fifty could do it, and there was but one part which he left out,—the walking round along with the other bishops with the cross borne before them. ”