e earth and water;
or to the colonnaded mansions peeping forth from the well-wooded
grounds of Roehampton and its vicinage.

I can remember as distinctly as if beheld yesterday, the various
tempting residences that meet the eye in a morning drive, or in a row
on the silvery Thames, compelling the violation of the tenth
commandment, by looking so beautiful that one imagines how happily a
life might glide away in such abodes, forgetful that in no earthly
abode can existence be passed free from the cares meant to remind us
that this is not our abiding-place.

Went to see Bagatelle yesterday with the Duchesse de G----. Here the
Duc de Bordeaux and Mademoiselle, his sister, pass much of their time.
It is a very pleasant villa, and contains many proofs of the taste and
industry of these very interesting children, who are greatly beloved by
those who have access to them. Various stories were related to us
illustrative of their goodness of heart and considerate kindness for
those around them; and, making all due allowance for the partiality of
the narrators, they went far to prove that these scions of royalty are
more amiable and unspoilt than are most children of their age, and of
even far less elevated rank. "Born in sorrow, and nursed in tears," the
Duc de Bordeaux's early infancy has not passed under bright auspices;
and those are not wanting who prophesy that he may hereafter look back
to the days passed at Bagatelle as the happiest of his life.

It requires little of the prescience of a soothsayer to make this
prediction, when we reflect that the lives of even the most popular of
those born to the dangerous inheritance of a crown must ever be more
exposed to the cares that weigh so heavily, and the responsibility that
presses so continually on them, than are those who, exempt from the
splendour of sovereignty, escape also its toils. "Oh happy they, the
happiest of their kind," who enjoy, in the peace and repose of a
private station, a competency, good health, a love of, and power of
indulging in, study; an unreproaching conscience, and a cheerful mind!
With such blessings they may contemplate, without a feeling of envy,
the more brilliant but less fortunate lots of those great ones of the
earth, whose elevation but too often serves to render them the target
at which Fortune loves aim her most envenomed darts.

Passed the greater part of the morning in the house in the Rue de
Matignon, superintending the alterations an