Loving France as they do, and wishing their sons to be brought up in the land of their birth, strong indeed must be the affection that induces them to abandon it, in order to devote themselves to the exiled Bourbons.  This devotion to the fallen is the more meritorious when the liberality of the Duc’s political opinions is taken into consideration.  How few sovereigns find such devotion in adversity! and how seldom are men to be met with capable of sacrificing their own interests and the future prospects of their children to a sense of duty!

* * * * *

A lapse in my journal.—­All seems now settled.  The foreign powers have acknowledged the King of the French; and this acknowledgment has not only delighted his subjects, but confirmed them in the belief of their own right to make or unmake sovereigns according to their will and pleasure.

The English are very popular in Paris at this moment, and the ready recognition of Louis-Philippe by our government has increased this good feeling.  A vast crowd escorted the carriage of Mr. Hamilton, the Secretary of the Embassy, to his door, as he returned from his first accredited audience of the new monarch, and cries of Vivent les Anglais! filled the air.  As Mr. Hamilton resides in the house next to the one I occupy, I had an opportunity of beholding this ovation offered to him, and the people certainly evinced very groat enthusiasm on the occasion.

M. Thiers, M. Mignet, Count Valeski, and Mr. Francis Raring, dined here yesterday.  M. Thiers was very brilliant and amusing.  It is impossible to meet him even once without being struck with the remarkable talent that characterises every sentence he utters; and yet each observation comes forth with such spirit and vivacity, that it is easy to see it has been elicited at the moment by some remark from another, and not from meditation.

There is a hardiness in his conceptions, and an epigrammatic terseness in the expression of them, that command attention; and the readiness with which he seizes, analyses, and disposes of a question, betrays such a versatility of mental power as to convey a conviction that he is a man who cannot fail to fill a distinguished place in France, where, at present, abilities furnish the master-key that opens the door to honours and fortune.  M. Thiers appears to entertain a consciousness of his talents, but does not, I really think, overrate them.

The Prince and Princess Soutzo with their family, spent yesterday with us.  Their eldest daughter, the Princess Helena, is a beautiful girl, with captivating manners, and highly cultivated mind, and the little Mary, though still in infancy, is one of the cleverest children I ever saw.  Never did I see young people better brought up than are the sons and daughters of this excellent couple, or a more united family.

Mr. and Miss Poulter, and William Spencer the poet, I dined here yesterday.  Mr. Poulter is a sensible man, and his sister is well informed and intelligent.