George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[128] that happened to come up; but, con amore, chiefly on England, and above everything else on his Lectures and the English translation of them, which, he said, he should be much delighted to hear was reprinted in America. In writing them in German, he said, he endeavored to keep before himself English and French prose, which he preferred to the German, and asked me with the eagerness of a hardened literator, whether I had not observed traces of this in reading them,—a question I was luckily able to answer in the affirmative, without doing violence to my conscience. On the whole, he amused me considerably, and I will seek occasion to see him often, if I can.

April 19.—Among other letters to Mad. de Stael, I had brought one from Sir Humphry Davy, and on coming from her house the other day, after having left them, I met him most unexpectedly on the Boulevards. Since then I have seen him two or three times at his lodgings and my own, and to-day I have dined with him at Mad. de Stael's, or rather with her daughter, the Duchess de Broglie, who now receives her mother's friends; long illness preventing her receiving them herself.

The company was not large,—Sir Humphry and Lady Davy, Baron Humboldt, the Duke de Laval, Augustus Schlegel, Auguste de Stael, and the Duke and Duchess de Broglie,—but it was not on that account less agreeable. It was the first time that I had felt anything of the spirit and charm of French society, which has been so much talked of since the time of Louis XIV.; and it is curious that on this occasion more than half the company were foreigners, and that the two who entertained the rest more than any others were Germans. It is but fair to say, however, that Baron Hmnboldt and M. de Schlegel have been so long in France that they have lost their nationality in all that relates to society, and, like Baron Grimm and the Prince de Ligne, have become more amusing to Frenchmen than their indigenous wits. The Duchess de Broglie is quite handsome, and has fine talents; her manners are naive to a fault, without being affected, but her beauty and talent make one forget it. The Duke is a fine-looking man of about twenty-nine, with, it is said, an uncommon amount of political knowledge, with liberal modes of thinking and speaking, still more extraordinary in the grandson of the proud and presumptuous Marshal de Broglie. Schlegel has remarkable powers for conversation, and often shines, because he unites German enthusiasm and force to French lightness and vivacity; and Humboldt was so excited by the presence of Sir Humphry Davy, that he became eloquent . . . . The conversation turned much on South America, of