ile is
good-natured and social; and when he is in the mood, as happened to be
the fact so often in our brief intercourse as to lead me to think it
characteristic of the man, his eye would lighten with a great deal of
latent fun. He spoke more freely of his private affairs than I had
reason to expect, though our business introduced the subject naturally;
and, at such times, I thought the expression changed to a sort of
melancholy resolution, that was not wanting in sublimity.

The manner of Sir Walter Scott is that of a man accustomed to see much
of the world without being exactly a man of the world himself. He has
evidently great social tact, perfect self-possession, is quiet, and
absolutely without pretension, and has much dignity; and yet it struck
me that he wanted the ease and _aplomb_ of one accustomed to live with
his equals. The fact of his being a lion may produce some such effect;
but I am mistaken if it be not more the influence of early habits and
opinions than of anything else.

Scott has been so much the mark of society, that it has evidently
changed his natural manner, which is far less restrained than it is his
habit to be in the world. I do not mean by this, the mere restraint of
decorum, but a drilled simplicity or demureness, like that of girls who
are curbed in their tendency to fun and light-heartedness, by the dread
of observation. I have seldom known a man of his years, whose manner was
so different in a _tete-a-tete_, and in the presence of a third person.
In Edinburgh the circle must be small, and he probably knows every one.
If strangers do go there, they do not go all at once, and of course the
old faces form the great majority; so that he finds himself always on
familiar ground. I can readily imagine that in Auld Reekie, and among
the proper set, warmed perhaps by a glass of mountain-dew, Sir Walter
Scott, in his peculiar way, is one of the pleasantest companions the
world holds.

There was a certain M. de ---- at the _soiree_ of the Princesse ----,
who has obtained some notoriety as the writer of novels. I had, the
honour of being introduced to this person, and was much amused with one
of his questions. You are to understand that the vaguest possible
notions exist in France on the subject of the United States. Empires,
states, continents, and islands are blended in inextricable confusion, in
the minds of a large majority of even the intelligent classes, and we
sometimes hear the oddest ide