a petit maitre de l’ancien regime, and the sparkling tabatiere of a Marquis Musque, the partaker if not the cause of half his succes dans le monde, is placed by the chapelet of a religieuse de haute naissance, who often perhaps dropped a tear on the beads as she counted them in saying her Ave Marias, when some unbidden thought of the world she had resigned usurped the place of her aspirations for a brighter and more enduring world.

“And so ’t will be when I am gone,” as Moore’s beautiful song says; the rare and beautiful bijouterie which I have collected with such pains, and looked on with such pleasure, will probably be scattered abroad, and find their resting places not in gilded salons, but in the dingy coffers of the wily brocanteur, whose exorbitant demands will preclude their finding purchasers.  Even these inanimate and puerile objects have their moral, if people would but seek it; but what has not, to a reflecting mind?—­complained bitterly to-day, of having been attacked by an anonymous scribbler.  I was surprised to see a man accounted clever and sensible, so much annoyed by what I consider so wholly beneath his notice.  It requires only a knowledge of the world and a self-respect to enable one to treat such attacks with the contempt they merit; and those who allow themselves to be mortified by them must be deficient in these necessary qualifications for passing smoothly through life.

It seems to me to indicate great weakness of mind, when a person permits his peace to be at the mercy of every anonymous scribbler who, actuated by envy or hatred (the invariable causes of such attacks), writes a libel on him.  If a person so attacked would but reflect that few, if any, who have acquired celebrity, or have been favoured by fortune, have ever escaped similar assaults, he would be disposed to consider them as the certain proofs of a merit, the general acknowledgment of which has excited the ire of the envious, thus displayed by the only mean within their reach—­anonymous abuse.  Anonymous assailants may be likened to the cuttle-fish, which employs the inky secretions it forms as a means of tormenting its enemy and baffling pursuit.

I have been reading the poems of Mrs. Hemans, and exquisite they are.  They affect me like sacred music, and never fail to excite religious sentiments.  England only could have produced this poetess, and peculiar circumstances were necessary to the developement of her genius.  The music of the versification harmonises well with the elevated character of the thoughts, which inspire the reader (at least such is their effect on me) with a pensive sentiment of resignation that is not without a deep charm to a mind that loves to withdraw itself from the turmoil and bustle incidental to a life passed in a gay and brilliant capital.

The mind of this charming poetess must be like an AEolian harp, that every sighing wind awakes to music, but to grave and chastened melody, the full charm of which can only be truly appreciated by those who have sorrowed, and who look beyond this earth for repose.  Well might Goethe write,