ho can forbear from trembling
lest the opening year may find us at its close with a lessened circle.
Some, now dear and confided in, may become estranged, or one dearer
than life may be snatched away whose place never can be supplied! The
thought is too painful to be borne, and makes one look around with
increased affection on those dear to us.

The custom prevalent at Paris of offering an exchange of gifts on the
first day of the new year was, perhaps, originally intended to banish
the melancholy reflections such an epoch is calculated to awaken.

My tables are so crowded with gifts that I might set up a _petit
Dunkerque_ of my own, for not a single friend has omitted to send me a
present. These gifts are to be acknowledged by ones of similar value,
and I must go and put my taste to the test in selecting _cadeaux_ to
send in return.

Spent several hours yesterday in the gallery of the Louvre. The
collection of antiquities, though a very rich, one, dwindles into
insignificance when compared with that of the Vatican, and the halls in
which it is arranged appear mean in the eyes of those accustomed to see
the numerous and splendid ones of the Roman edifice. Nevertheless, I
felt much satisfaction in lounging through groups of statues, and busts
of the remarkable men and women of antiquity, with the countenances of
many of whom I had made myself familiar in the Vatican, the Musee of
the Capitol, or in the collection at Naples, where facsimiles of
several of them are to be found.

Nor had I less pleasure in contemplating the personifications of the
_beau ideal_ of the ancient sculptors, exhibited in their gods and
goddesses, in whose faultless faces the expression of all passion seems
to have been carefully avoided. Whether this peculiarity is to be
accounted for by the desire of the artist to signify the superiority of
the Pagan divinities over mortals, by this absence of any trace of
earthly feelings, or whether it was thought that any decided expression
might deteriorate from the character of repose and beauty that marks
the works of the great sculptors of antiquity, I know not, but the
effect produced on my mind by the contemplation of these calm and
beautiful faces, has something so soothing in it, that I can well
imagine with what pleasure those engaged in the turmoils of war, or the
scarcely less exciting arena of politics, in former ages, must have
turned from their mundane cares to look on these personations of