Dining is a serious affair with ——.  Soup, fish, flesh, and fowl, disappear from his plate with a rapidity that is really surprising; and while they are vanishing, not “into empty air,” but into the yawning abyss of his ravenous jaws, his eyes wander around, seeking what next those same ravenous jaws may devour.

On beholding a person indulge in such gluttony, I feel a distaste to eating, as a certain double-refined lady of my acquaintance declared that witnessing the demonstrations of love between two persons of low and vulgar habits so disgusted her with the tender passion, that she was sure she never could experience it herself.

I have been reading la Chronique du Temps de Charles IX, by Prosper Merimee, and a most interesting and admirably written book it is.  Full of stirring scenes and incidents, it contains the most graphic pictures of the manners of the time in which the story is placed, and the interest progresses, never flagging from the commencement to the end.  This book will be greatly admired in England, where the romances of our great Northern Wizard have taught us to appreciate the peculiar merit in which this abounds.  Sir Walter Scott will be one of the first to admire and render justice to this excellent book, and to welcome into the field of literature this highly gifted brother of the craft.

The French writers deserve justice from the English, for they invariably treat the works of the latter with indulgence.  Scott is not more read or esteemed in his own country than here; and even the productions of our young writers are more kindly treated than those of their own youthful aspirants for fame.

French critics have much merit for this amenity, because the greater number of them possess a peculiar talent, for the exercise of their critical acumen, which renders the indulgence of it, like that of the power of ridicule, very tempting.  Among the most remarkable critics of the day Jules Janin, who though yet little more than a youth, evinces such talent as a reviewer as to be the terror of mediocrity.  His style is pungent and vigorous, his satire searching and biting, and his tact in pointing ridicule unfailing.  He bids fair to take a most distinguished place in his profession.

Spent last evening in the Rue d’Anjou, where I met the usual circle and ——.  He bepraised every one that was named during the evening, and so injudiciously, that it was palpable he knew little of those upon whom he expended his eulogiums; nay, he lauded some whom he acknowledged he had never seen, on the same principle that actuated the Romans of old who, having deified every body they knew, erected at last an altar to the unknown Gods, lest any should by chance be omitted.