In the meridian of youth and beauty, and filling so brilliant a position in France, it is touching to witness how wholly engrossed this amiable young woman’s thoughts are by her domestic duties.  She incites, by sharing, the studies of her boys; and already is her little girl, owing to her mother’s judicious system, cited as a model.

It was pleasant to see the Duc, when released from his attendance at court, hurrying into the sick chamber of his children, and their languid eyes, lighting up with a momentary animation, and their feverish lips relaxing into a smile, at the sound of his well-known voice.  And this is the couple considered to be “the glass of fashion and the mould of form,” the observed of all observers, of the courtly circle at Paris!

Who could behold them as I have done, in that sick room, without acknowledging that, despite of all that has been said of the deleterious influence of courts on the feelings of those who live much in them, the truly good pass unharmed through the dangerous ordeal?

Went to the Theatre des Nouveautes last night, where I saw La Maison du Rempart.  The Parisians seem to have decided taste for bringing scenes of riot and disorder on the stage; and the tendency of such exhibitions is any thing but salutary with so inflammable a people, and in times like the present.

One of the scenes of La Maison du Rempart represents an armed mob demolishing the house of a citizen—­an act of violence that seemed to afford great satisfaction to the majority of the audience; and, though the period represented is that of the Fronde, the acts of the rabble strongly assimilated with those of the same class in later times, when the revolution let loose on hapless France the worst of all tyrants—­a reckless and sanguinary mob.  I cannot help feeling alarmed at the consequences likely to result from such performances.  Sparks of fire flung among gunpowder are not more dangerous.  Shewing a populace what they can effect by brutal force is a dangerous experiment; it is like letting a tame lion see how easily he could overpower his keepers.

Mr. Cuthbert and M. Charles Laffitte dined here yesterday.  Both are excellent specimens of their countries; the former being well-informed and agreeable, and the latter possessing all the good sense we believe to be peculiar to an Englishman, with the high breeding that appertains to a thoroughly well-educated Frenchman.

The advance of civilization was evident in both these gentlemen—­the Englishman speaking French with purity and fluency, and the Frenchman speaking English like a born Briton.  Twenty years ago, this would have been considered a very rare occurrence, while now it excites little remark.  But it is not alone the languages of the different countries that Mr. Cuthbert and M. Charles Laffitte have acquired, for both are well acquainted with the literature of each, which renders their society very agreeable.