Honour to Mr. Temple!--Your letter, which he forwarded, reached me in ten days, while those which come through our diplomacy are three weeks on the road. Give him my best thanks. I laughed heartily at the news H---- sends me so humourously. The little _Criminal-rath_ ('conseiller criminel') whom the jester calls 'le Rat criminel'; the 'Renvoyé extraordinaire,' and the 'Diplomate à la fourchette,' are admirably painted; so is The Fortunate house-court-state-and body-servant. Don't wonder at his success: it is indisputable that there is a sort of narrowness which almost always succeeds in the world; and a character of mind which never succeeds. Mine is of this latter sort--a fantastic picture-making mind, that fashions its own dream-world anew every day, and thence remains for ever a stranger in the actual world. You tell me that if Fortune had offered herself to me, I should have slighted her, or at most, playfully taken her by the finger, instead of clutching her earnestly;--that I never valued the present till it stood as a picture in the far distance;--that then indeed it was often a picture of repentance and regret; the future, a picture of longing and aspiration; the present, never anything but a misty spot. 'A merveille.' You say all this most charmingly; and I must acknowledge that nobody understands better how to moralize impressively than you.--If it were but of any use to me! But tell me,--if you could convince the lame man that it were far better for him not to be lame;--as soon as the poor wretch tries to set one foot before the other, does he limp the less? 'Naturam expellas furca,' &c. Vainly do you desire your stomach to digest better, your wit to be sharper, your reason to be more efficient:--things go on in their old train, with a few modifications. The decisions of the Ministers on the S---- affair, which you communicate to me, also remain after the old sort, in spite of the extreme politeness of those gentlemen. Is it not strange, however, that our inferior functionaries distinguish themselves as much by their 'tracasseries,' and by their ill-bred, and I might say contemptuous style, as the higher do (with a single exception) by their care in using none but the most refined and polished forms? Do not these on this very account wear the appearance of the bitterest irony? You may give this as a subject for a prize-essay to our G---- dilettante academy.