e justified all my
expectations. Clear, rapid, full and equal, his discourse is worthy
its celebrity, and I felt repaid for the four hours one is obliged to
spend in going, in waiting, and in hearing; for the lecture begins at
half past one, and you must be there before twelve to get a seat, so
constant and animated is his popularity.

I have attended, with some interest, two discussions at the
Athenee,--one on Suicide, the other on the Crusades. They are amateur
affairs, where, as always at such times, one hears much, nonsense and
vanity, much making of phrases and sentimental grimace; but there was
one excellent speaker, adroit and rapid as only a Frenchman could be.
With admirable readiness, skill, and rhetorical polish, he examined
the arguments of all the others, and built upon their failures
a triumph for himself. His management of the language, too,
was masterly, and French is the best of languages for such a
purpose,--clear, flexible, full of sparkling points and quick,
picturesque turns, with a subtile blandness that makes the dart tickle
while it wounds. Truly he pleased the fancy, filled the ear, and
carried us pleasantly along over the smooth, swift waters; but then
came from the crowd a gentleman, not one of the appointed orators
of the evening, but who had really something in his heart to say,--a
grave, dark man, with Spanish eyes, and the simple dignity of honor
and earnestness in all his gesture and manner. He said in few and
unadorned words his say, and the sense of a real presence filled the
room, and those charms of rhetoric faded, as vanish the beauties of
soap-bubbles from the eyes of astonished childhood.

I was present on one good occasion at the Academy the day that M.
Remusat was received there in the place of Royer-Collard. I looked
down from one of the tribunes upon the flower of the celebrities of
France, that is to say, of the celebrities which are authentic, _comme
il faut_. Among them were many marked faces, many fine heads; but
in reading the works of poets we always fancy them about the age of
Apollo himself, and I found with pain some of my favorites quite old,
and very unlike the company on Parnassus as represented by Raphael.
Some, however, were venerable, even noble, to behold. Indeed, the
literary dynasty of France is growing old, and here, as in England
and Germany, there seems likely to occur a serious gap before the
inauguration of another, if indeed another is coming.

Howev