As the season, thank Heaven, now draws near its close, I project a tour to the north of England, and Scotland, whither I have received several invitations, but had rather preserve my liberty in order to scour the country 'à ma guise,' if time and circumstances permit. To-day we had the finest weather I have seen in England; and as I returned from the country in the evening, after an early dinner at Count Münster's, I saw, for the first time, an Italian light on the distance,--shades of blue and lilac as rich and as soft as a picture of Claude's. 'A propos,' among the notabilia for imitation I must mention a flower-table of the Countess's. The top is a crystal-clear glass, under which is a deep box or tray filled with wet sand, with a fine wire net over it, in the interstices of which fresh flowers are closely stuck. The tray is pushed in, and you have the most beautiful flower-picture to write or work over. If you wish to regale yourself with the fragrance, you may open the glass cover, or remove it entirely. Children's balls are now the order of the day, and I went to one of the prettiest this evening at Lady Jersey's. These highborn northern children had every possible advantage of dress, and many were not without grace; but it really afflicted me to observe how early they had ceased to be children;--the poor things were, for the most part, as unnatural, as unjoyous, and as much occupied with themselves, as we great figures around them. Italian peasant-children would have been a hundred times more graceful and more engaging. It was only at supper that the animal instinct displayed itself more openly and unreservedly, and, breaking through all forms and all disguises, reinstated Nature in her rights. The pure and lovely natural feeling, however, was the tenderness of the mothers, which betrayed itself without affectation in their beaming eyes, made many an ugly woman tolerable, and gave to the beautiful a higher beauty. A second ball at Lady R----'s presented the hundredth repetition of the usual stupid throng, in which poor Prince B----, for whose corpulence these squeezes are little adapted, fainted, and leaning on the banister, gasped for air like a dying carp. Pleasure and happiness are certainly pursued in very odd ways in this world. _July 3rd._ This afternoon I rode by a long circuitous way to eat a solitary fish dinner at Greenwich. The view from the Observatory is remarkable for this,--that almost the whole surface of ground you overlook is occupied by the city of London, which continually stretches out its polypus arms wider and wider, and swallows up the villages in its neighbourhood, one after another. Indeed, for a population equal to that of half the kingdom of Saxony some space is wanted.