The Marquis de Dreux-Brezé, well-dressed and well-bred, too, appears not to have studied either his toilette or his manners; and, though by no means deficient in polite attention to women, seems to believe that there are higher and more praiseworthy pursuits than that of thinking only how to please them, and bestows more thought on the _Chambre des Pairs_ than on the _salons à la mode_. One is a passive and ornamental member of society, the other a useful and active politician, I have remarked that the Frenchmen of high birth of the present time all seem disposed to take pains in fitting themselves for the duties of their station. They read much and with profit, travel much more than formerly, and are free from the narrow prejudices against other countries, which, while they prove not a man's attachment to his own, offer one of the most insurmountable of all barriers to that good understanding so necessary to be maintained between nations. Dined yesterday at St.-Cloud with the Baron and Baroness de Ruysch; a very agreeable and intellectual pair, who have made a little paradise around them in the shape of an English pleasure ground, blooming with rare shrubs and flowers. Our old friend, Mr. Douglas Kinnaird--"the honourable Dug," as poor Lord Byron used to call him--paid me a visit to-day. I had not seen him for seven years, and these same years have left their traces on his brow. He is in delicate health, and is only come over to Paris for a very few days. He has lived in the same scenes and in the same routine that we left him, wholly engrossed by them, while "I've taught me other tongues, and in strange eyes Have made me not a stranger;" and wonder how people can be content to dwell whole years in so circumscribed, however useful, a circle. Those who live much in London seem to me to have tasted the lotus which, according to the fable of old, induced forgetfulness of the past, so wholly are they engrossed by the present, and by the vortex in which they find themselves plunged. Much as I like England, and few love it more dearly, I should not like to pass all the rest of my life in it. _All, all_: it is thus we ever count on futurity, reckoning as if our lives were certain of being prolonged, when we know not that the _all_ on which we so boldly calculate may not be terminated in a day, nay, even in an hour. Who is there that can boast an English birth, that would not wish to die at home and rest in an English grave? Sir Francis Burdett has arrived, and means to stay some time here. He called on us yesterday with Colonel Leicester Stanhope, and is as agreeable and good-natured as ever. He is much _fêted_ at Paris, and receives great attention from the Duc d'Orléans, who has offered him his boxes at the theatres, and shews him all manner of civilities.