wants, and great fire. The Dumenil I have not seen yet, but shall in a
day or two. It is a mortification that I cannot compare her with the
Clairon, who has left the stage. Grandval I saw through a whole play
without suspecting it was he. Alas! four-and-twenty years make strange
havoc with us mortals! You cannot imagine how this struck me! The
Italian comedy, now united with their _opera comique_, is their most
perfect diversion; but alas! harlequin, my dear favourite harlequin, my
passion, makes me more melancholy than cheerful. Instead of laughing, I
sit silently reflecting how everything loses charms when one's own youth
does not lend it gilding! When we are divested of that eagerness and
illusion with which our youth presents objects to us, we are but the
_caput mortuum_ of pleasure.

Grave as these ideas are, they do not unfit me for French company. The
present tone is serious enough in conscience. Unluckily, the subjects of
their conversation are duller to me than my own thoughts, which may be
tinged with melancholy reflections, but I doubt from my constitution
will never be insipid.

The French affect philosophy, literature, and free-thinking: the first
never did, and never will possess me; of the two others I have long been
tired. Free-thinking is for one's self, surely not for society; besides
one has settled one's way of thinking, or knows it cannot be settled,
and for others I do not see why there is not as much bigotry in
attempting conversions from any religion as to it. I dined to-day with a
dozen _savans_, and though all the servants were waiting, the
conversation was much more unrestrained, even on the Old Testament, than
I would suffer at my own table in England, if a single footman was
present. For literature, it is very amusing when one has nothing else to
do. I think it rather pedantic in society; tiresome when displayed