their return. They all dine with us to-morrow;
and Madame Craufurd comes to meet them.

Never have I seen such children as the Duc de Quiche's. Uniting to the
most remarkable personal beauty an intelligence and docility as rare as
they are delightful; and never did I witness any thing like the
unceasing care and attention bestowed on their education by their
parents.

Those who only know the Duc and Duchesse in the gay circles, in which
they are universally esteemed among the brightest ornaments, can form
little idea of them in the privacy of their domestic one--emulating
each other in their devotion to their children, and giving only the
most judicious proofs of their attachment to them. No wonder that the
worthy Duc de Gramont doats on his grandchildren, and never seems so
happy as with his excellent son and daughter-in-law.

Went to the Vaudeville Theatre last evening, to see the new piece by
Scribe, so much talked of, entitled _Avant_, _Pendant, et Apres_. There
is a fearful _vraisemblance_ in some of the scenes with all that one
has read or pictured to oneself, as daily occurring during the terrible
days of the Revolution; and the tendency of the production is not, in
my opinion, calculated to produce salutary effects. I only wonder it is
permitted to be acted.

The piece is divided, as the title announces, into three different
epochs. The first represents the frivolity and vices attributed to the
days of _l'ancien regime_, and the _tableau des moeurs_, which is
vividly coloured, leaves no favourable impression in the minds of the
audience of that _noblesse_ whose sufferings subsequently expiated the
errors said to have accelerated, if not to have produced, the
Revolution.

Nothing is omitted that could cast odium on them, as a preparation for
the Reign of Terror that follows. The anarchy and confusion of the
second epoch--the fear and horror that prevail when the voices and
motions of a sanguinary mob are heard in the streets, and the terrified
inmates of the houses are seen crouching in speechless terror, are
displayed with wonderful truth.

The lesson is an awful, and I think a dangerous, one, and so seemed to
think many of the upper class among the audience, for I saw some fair
cheeks turn pale, and some furrowed brows look ominous, as the scene
was enacted, while those of the less elevated in rank among the
spectators assumed, or seemed to assume, a certain _fierte_, if not
ferocity, of aspect, at beh