The feelings of poor “Margaret” are those of all her sex, ere vice has sullied the nature it never can wholly subdue.

Mr. and Mrs. Hare left Paris to-day.  I regret their departure; for she is lively and agreeable, and I have known him so long, and like him so well, that their society afforded me pleasure.

A large party at dinner, yesterday; among whom, was Mr. M——­, who has acquired a certain celebrity for his bons mots.  He is said to be decidedly clever, and to know the world thoroughly:  appreciating it at its just value, and using it as if formed for his peculiar profit and pleasure.  He is lately returned from England, where he has been received with that hospitality that characterises the English, and has gone a round of visits to many of the best houses.

He spoke in high terms of the hospitality he had experienced, but agreed in the opinion I have often heard Lord Byron give, that the society in English country-houses is any thing but agreeable.

I had heard so much of Mr. M——­, that I listened to his conversation with more interest than I might have done, had not so many reports of his shrewdness and wit reached me.  Neither seem to have been overrated; for nothing escapes his quick perception; and his caustic wit is unsparingly and fearlessly applied to all subjects and persons that excite it into action.

He appears to be a privileged person—­an anomaly seldom innoxiously permitted in society:  for those who may say all they please, rarely abstain from saying much that may displease others; and, though a laugh may he often excited by their wit, some one of the circle is sure to be wounded by it.

Great wit is not often allied to good-nature, for the indulgence of the first is destructive to the existence of the second, except where the wit is tempered by a more than ordinary share of sensibility and refinement, directing its exercise towards works of imagination, instead of playing it off, as is too frequently the case, against those with whom its owner may come in contact.

Byron, had he not been a poet, would have become a wit in society; and, instead of delighting his readers, would have wounded his associates.  Luckily for others, as well as for his own fame, he devoted to literature that ready and brilliant wit which sparkles in so many of his pages, instead of condescending to expend it in bons mots, or reparties, that might have set the table on a roar, and have been afterwards, as often occurs, mutilated in being repeated by, others.

The quickness of apprehension peculiar to the French, joined to the excessive amour propre, which is one of the most striking of their characteristics, render them exceedingly susceptible to the arrows of wit; which, when barbed by ridicule, inflict wounds on their vanity difficult to be healed, and which they are ever ready to avenge.

But this very acuteness of apprehension induces a caution in not resenting the assaults of wit, unless the wounded can retort with success by a similar weapon, or that the attack has been so obvious that he is justified in resenting it by a less poetical one.  Hence arises a difficult position for him on whom a wit is pleased to exercise his talent; and this is one of the many reasons why privileged persons seldom add much to the harmony of society.