Certainly, no people can have seen more of the world than we have done in the last three months. By seeing the world I mean seeing varieties of characters and manners, and being behind the scenes of life in many different societies and families. The constant chorus of our moral as we drive home together at night is, "How happy we are to be so fond of each other! How happy we are to be independent of all we see here! How happy that we have our dear home to return to at last!" But to return to the Princess Potemkin: she is Russian, but she has all the grace, softness, and winning manners of the Polish ladies, and an oval face, pale, with the finest, softest, most expressive _chestnut_ dark eyes. She has a sort of politeness which pleases peculiarly--a mixture of the ease of high rank and early habit with something that is sentimental without affectation. Madame Le Brun is painting her picture: Madame Le Brun is sixty-six, with great vivacity as well as genius, and better worth seeing than her pictures; for though they are speaking, she speaks, and speaks uncommonly well. Madame de Noisville, _dame d'honneur_ to the Princess Potemkin, educated her and her sisters: the friendship of the pupil and the preceptress does honour to both. Madame de Noisville is a very well-bred woman, of superior understanding and decided character, very entertaining and agreeable. She told us that Rostopchin, speaking of the Russians, said he would represent their civilisation by a naked man looking at himself in a gilt-framed mirror. The Governor of Siberia lived at Petersburgh, and never went near his government. One day the Emperor, in presence of this governor and Rostopchin, was boasting of his farsightedness. "Commend me," said Rostopchin, "to M. le Gouverneur, who sees so well from Petersburgh to Siberia." Good-bye. * * * * * An evening which Miss Edgeworth spent at Neuilly _en famille_ impressed her with the unaffected happiness of the Orleans family. The Duke showed her the picture of himself teaching a school in America: Mademoiselle d'Orleans pointed to her harp, and said she superintended the lessons of her nieces; both she and her brother acknowledging how admirably Madame de Genlis had instructed them. The Duchess sat at a round table working, and in the course of the evening the two eldest little boys ran in from an École d'enseignement mutuel which they attended in the neighbourhood, with their schoolbooks in their hands, and some prizes they had gained, eager to display them to their mother. It was a happy, simple family party. * * * * * MARIA _to_ MRS. RUXTON. PARIS, _July 1820._