ook! My hopes have
faded and vanished like the leaves whose opening into life I hailed
with joy six months ago, little dreaming that before the first cold
breath of autumn had tinted them with brown, _he_ who saw them expand
with me would have passed from the earth!

_October_.--Ill, and confined to my chamber for several days, my
physician prescribes society to relieve low spirits; but in the present
state of mine, the remedy seems worse than the disease.

My old friends Mr. and Mrs. Mathews, and their clever son, have arrived
at Paris and dined here yesterday. Mr. Matthews is as entertaining as
ever, and his wife as amiable and _spirituelle_. They are excellent as
well as clever people, and their society is very agreeable. Charles
Mathews, the son, is full of talent, possesses all his father's powers
of imitation, and sings comic songs of his own composition that James
Smith himself might be proud to have written.

The Duc and Duchesse de Guiche, the Marquise de Poulpry, Lady
Combermere, Madame Craufurd, and Count Valeski, came in the evening,
and were all highly gratified with some recitations and songs given us
by Mr. Mathews and his son. They were not less pleased with Mrs.
Mathews, whose manners and conversation are peculiarly fascinating, and
whose good looks and youthfulness of appearance made them almost
disbelieve that she could be the mother of a grown-up son.

How forcibly did the recitations and songs bring back former times to
my memory, when in St. James's Square, or in his own beautiful cottage
at Highgate, I have so frequently been delighted by the performances of
this clever and worthy man! The recollection of the past occupied me
more last night than did the actual present, and caused me to return
but a faint echo to the reiterated applause which every new effort of
his drew forth from the party. There are moments when the present
appears like a dream, and that we think the past, which is gone for
ever, has more of reality in it!

I took Mr. and Mrs. Mathews to the Jardin des Plantes to-day, and was
much amused by an incident that occurred there. A pretty child, with
her _bonne_, were seated on a bench near to which we placed ourselves.
She was asking questions relative to the animals she had seen, and Mr.
Mathews having turned his head away from her, gave some admirable
imitations of the sounds peculiar to the beasts of which she was
speaking, and also of the voice and speeches of the person who