hought never leaves me. It is this,--how will a nature
so attuned as hers stand the rude jars and discords of "the world?"
for, do how we will, screen the object of affection how we may from its
shocks and concussions, the stern realities of life will make themselves
felt. Hers is too impassioned a nature to bear such reverses, as the
most even current sustains, without injury. The very consciousness of
being mistaken in our opinions of people is a sore lesson; it is the
beginning of scepticism, to end--who can tell where?

She smiles whenever I lecture her upon any eccentricity of manner,
and evidently deems my formalism, as she calls it, a relic of my early
teaching. So, perhaps, it may be. No class of people are so unforgiving
to any thing like a peculiarity as your _Diplomates_. They know the
value of the impassive bearing that reveals nothing, and they carry
the reserve of office into all the relations of private life. She even
quizzes me about this, and says that I remind her of the old Austrian
envoy at Naples, who never ventured upon any thing more explicit than
the two phrases--_C'est dure_, or _C'est sure_, ringing the changes of
these upon every piece of news that reached him. How altered am I, if
this judgment be correct! I, that was headstrong even to rashness, led
by every impulse, precipitate in every thing, ready to resign all, and
with one chance my favour to dare nine full against me!

But why wonder if I be so changed? How has life and every living object
changed its aspect to my eyes, rendering distasteful a thousand things
wherein I once took pleasure, and making of others that I deemed flat,
stale, and unprofitable, the greatest charms of my existence? What close
and searching scrutiny of motives creeps on with years! what distrust,
and what suspicion! It is this same sentiment--the fruit of a hundred
self-deceptions and disappointments--makes so many men, as they advance
in life, abjure Liberalism in politics, and lean to the side of Absolute
Rule. The "Practical" exercises the only influence on the mind tempered
by long experience; and the glorious tyranny of St. Peter's is
infinitely preferable to the miscalled freedom of Popular Government.
The present Pope, however our Radical friends think of it, is no
unworthy successor of Hildebrand; and however plausible be the assumed
reforms in his States, the real thraldom, the great slavery, remains
untouched! "Hands Free, Souls Fettered," is strange h