I know no position more enviable than that of the Duc d’Orleans.  Blessed with health, a princely revenue, an admirable wife, fine children, and many friends, he can have nothing to desire but a continuance of these blessings.  Having experienced adversity, and nobly endured the ordeal, he must feel with an increased zest the happiness now accorded to him,—­a happiness that seems so full and complete, that I can fancy no addition possible to it.

His vast wealth may enable him to exercise a generosity that even sovereigns can rarely practise; his exalted rank, while it places him near a throne, precludes him from the eating cares that never fail to attend even the most solidly established one, and leaves him free to enjoy the happiness of domestic life in a family circle said to contain every ingredient for creating it.

The fondest husband, father, and brother, he is fortunate beyond most men in his domestic relations, and furnishes to France a bright example of irreproachable conduct and well-merited felicity in them all.  In the possession of so many blessings, I should, were I in his position (and he probably does, or he is not the sensible man I take him to be), tremble at the possibility of any event that could call him from the calm enjoyment of them to the giddy height and uneasy seat of a throne.

The present king is in the vale of years, the Dauphin not young, and the Duc de Bordeaux is but a child.  Should any thing occur to this child, then would the Duc d’Orleans stand in direct line after the Dauphin.  I thought of this contingency last night as I looked on the happy family, and felt assured that were the Duc d’Orleans called to reign in France, these same faces would look less cloudless than they did then, for I am one of those who believe that “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

With a good sense that characterises the Duc d’Orleans, he has sent his sons to public schools—­a measure well calculated not only to give them a just knowledge of the world, so often denied to princes, but to render them popular.  The Duc de Chartres is an exceedingly handsome young man, and his brothers are fine youths.  The Princesses are brought up immediately under the eye of their mother, who is allowed by every one to be a faultless model for her sex.

The Duc d’Orleans is said to be wholly engrossed in the future prospects of his children, and in insuring, as far as human foresight can insure, their prosperity.

I have been reading Shelley’s works, in which I have found many beautiful thoughts.  This man of genius—­for decidedly such he was—­has not yet been rendered justice to; the errors that shroud his poetry, as vapours rising from too rich a soil spread a mist that obstructs our view of the flowers that also spring from the same bed, have hindered us from appreciating the many beauties that abound in Shelley’s writings.  Alarmed by the poison that lurks in some of his wild speculations, we have slighted the antidote to be found in many others of them, and heaped obloquy on the fame of a poet whose genius and kindness of heart should have insured our pity for the errors of his creed.