take him to be),
tremble at the possibility of any event that could call him from the
calm enjoyment of them to the giddy height and uneasy seat of a throne.

The present king is in the vale of years, the Dauphin not young, and
the Duc de Bordeaux is but a child. Should any thing occur to this
child, then would the Duc d'Orleans stand in direct line after the
Dauphin. I thought of this contingency last night as I looked on the
happy family, and felt assured that were the Duc d'Orleans called to
reign in France, these same faces would look less cloudless than they
did then, for I am one of those who believe that "uneasy lies the head
that wears a crown."

With a good sense that characterises the Duc d'Orleans, he has sent his
sons to public schools--a measure well calculated not only to give them
a just knowledge of the world, so often denied to princes, but to
render them popular. The Duc de Chartres is an exceedingly handsome
young man, and his brothers are fine youths. The Princesses are brought
up immediately under the eye of their mother, who is allowed by every
one to be a faultless model for her sex.

The Duc d'Orleans is said to be wholly engrossed in the future
prospects of his children, and in insuring, as far as human foresight
can insure, their prosperity.

I have been reading Shelley's works, in which I have found many
beautiful thoughts. This man of genius--for decidedly such he was--has
not yet been rendered justice to; the errors that shroud his poetry, as
vapours rising from too rich a soil spread a mist that obstructs our
view of the flowers that also spring from the same bed, have hindered
us from appreciating the many beauties that abound in Shelley's
writings. Alarmed by the poison that lurks in some of his wild
speculations, we have slighted the antidote to be found in many others
of them, and heaped obloquy on the fame of a poet whose genius and
kindness of heart should have insured our pity for the errors of his
creed.

He who was all charity has found none in the judgment pronounced on him
by his contemporaries; but posterity will be more just. The wild
theories and fanciful opinions of Shelley, on subjects too sacred to be
approached lightly, carry with them their own condemnation; and so
preclude the evil which pernicious doctrines, more logically reasoned,
might produce on weak minds. His theories are vague, dreamy, always
erroneous, and often absurd: but the imagination of the poet, and