as it is an excellent man[90].  I wish there had been more inconvenience and less gratification to my self-love in it, for then there had been more merit.  We are all selfish—­and I believe, ye gods of Epicurus!  I believe in Rochefoucault about men, and in Lucretius (not Busby’s translation) about yourselves.  Your bard has made you very nonchalant and blest; but as he has excused us from damnation, I don’t envy you your blessedness much—­a little, to be sure.  I remember, last year, * * said to me, at * *, ’Have we not passed our last month like the gods of Lucretius?’ And so we had.  She is an adept in the text of the original (which I like too); and when that booby Bus. sent his translating prospectus, she subscribed.  But, the devil prompting him to add a specimen, she transmitted him a subsequent answer, saying, that ’after perusing it, her conscience would not permit her to allow her name to remain on the list of subscribblers.’  Last night, at Lord H.’s—­Mackintosh, the Ossulstones, Puysegur, &c. there—­I was trying to recollect a quotation (as I think) of Stael’s, from some Teutonic sophist about architecture.  ‘Architecture,’ says this Macoronico Tedescho, ‘reminds me of frozen music.’  It is somewhere—­but where?—­the demon of perplexity must know and won’t tell.  I asked M., and he said it was not in her:  but P——­r said it must be hers, it was so like.  H. laughed, as he does at all ’De l’Allemagne,’—­in which, however, I think he goes a little too far.  B., I hear, condemns it too.  But there are fine passages;—­and, after all, what is a work—­any—­or every work—­but a desert with fountains, and, perhaps, a grove or two, every day’s journey?  To be sure, in Madame, what we often mistake, and ‘pant for,’ as the ‘cooling stream,’ turns out to be the ‘mirage’ (critice verbiage); but we do, at last, get to something like the temple of Jove Ammon, and then the waste we have passed is only remembered to gladden the contrast.

“Called on C * *, to explain * * *.  She is very beautiful, to my taste, at least; for on coming home from abroad, I recollect being unable to look at any woman but her—­they were so fair, and unmeaning, and blonde.  The darkness and regularity of her features reminded me of my ‘Jannat al Aden.’  But this impression wore off; and now I can look at a fair woman, without longing for a Houri.  She was very good-tempered, and every thing was explained.

“To-day, great news—­’the Dutch have taken Holland,’—­which, I suppose, will be succeeded by the actual explosion of the Thames.  Five provinces have declared for young Stadt, and there will be inundation, conflagration, constupration, consternation, and every sort of nation and nations, fighting away, up to their knees, in the damnable quags of this will-o’-the-wisp abode of Boors.  It is said Bernadotte is amongst them, too; and, as Orange will be there soon, they will have (Crown) Prince Stork and King Log in their Loggery at the same time.  Two to one on the new dynasty!