ay we must
experience could we but behold ourselves as others see us, after a
lapse of years without having met; while we, unconscious of the sad
change in ourselves, are perfectly sensible of it in them. Oh, the
misery of the _mezzo termine_ in the journey of life, when time robs
the eyes of their lustre, the cheeks of their roses, the mouth of its
pearls, and the heart of its gaiety, and writes harsh sentences on
brows once smooth and polished as marble!

Well a-day! ah, well a-day!
Why fleets youth so fast away,
Taking beauty in its train,
Never to return again?

Well a-day! ah, well a-day!
Why will health no longer stay?
After youth 't will not remain,
Chased away by care and pain.

Well a-day! ah, well a-day!
Youth, health, beauty, gone for aye,
Life itself must quickly wane
With its thoughts and wishes vain.

Well a-day! ah, well a-day!
Frail and perishable clay
That to earth our wishes chain,
Well it is that brief's thy reign.

I have been reading Captain Marryat's _Naval Officer_, and think it
exceedingly clever and amusing. It is like himself, full of talent,
originality, and humour. He is an accurate observer of life; nothing
escapes him; yet there is no bitterness in his satire and no
exaggeration in his comic vein. He is never obliged to explain to his
readers _why_ the characters he introduces act in such or such a
manner.

They always bear out the parts he wishes them to enact, and the whole
story goes on so naturally that one feels as if reading a narrative of
facts, instead of a work of fiction.

I have known Captain Marryat many years, and liked him from the first;
but this circumstance, far from rendering me more indulgent to his
novel, makes me more fastidious; for I find myself at all times more
disposed to criticise the writings of persons whom I know and like than
those of strangers: perhaps because I expect more from them, if, as in
the present case, I know them to be very clever.

Dined yesterday at the Cadran Bleu, and went in the evening to see _La
Tour d'Auvergne_, a piece founded on the life, and taking its name from
a soldier of the time of the Republic. A nobler character than that of
La Tour d'Auvergne could not be selected for a dramatic hero, and
ancient times furnish posterity with no brighter example. A letter from
Carnot, then Minister of War, addressed to this distinguished soldier
and ad