Alas! alas! that voices, like faces, should lose their delicate flexibility and freshness, and seem but like the faint echo of their former brilliant tones! Does the ear of a singer, like the eye of some _has-been_ beauty, lose its fine perception and become accustomed to the change in the voice, as does the eye to that in the face, to which it appertains, from being daily in the habit of seeing the said face! Merciful dispensation of Providence, which thus saves us from the horror and dismay we must experience could we but behold ourselves as others see us, after a lapse of years without having met; while we, unconscious of the sad change in ourselves, are perfectly sensible of it in them.

Oh, the misery of the _mezzo termine_ in the journey of life, when time robs the eyes of their lustre, the cheeks of their roses, the mouth of its pearls, and the heart of its gaiety, and writes harsh sentences on brows once smooth and polished as marble! Well a-day! ah, well a-day! Why fleets youth so fast away, Taking beauty in its train, Never to return again?
Well a-day! ah, well a-day! Why will health no longer stay?
After youth 't will not remain, Chased away by care and pain.
Well a-day! ah, well a-day! Youth, health, beauty, gone for aye, Life itself must quickly wane With its thoughts and wishes vain.
Well a-day! ah, well a-day! Frail and perishable clay That to earth our wishes chain, Well it is that brief's thy reign.
I have been reading Captain Marryat's _Naval Officer_, and think it exceedingly clever and amusing.

It is like himself, full of talent, originality, and humour.

He is an accurate observer of life; nothing escapes him; yet there is no bitterness in his satire and no exaggeration in his comic vein.

He is never obliged to explain to his readers _why_ the characters he introduces act in such or such a manner.
They always bear out the parts he wishes them to enact, and the whole story goes on so naturally that one feels as if reading a narrative of facts, instead of a work of fiction.
I have known Captain Marryat many years, and liked him from the first; but this circumstance, far from rendering me more indulgent to his novel, makes me more fastidious; for I find myself at all times more disposed to criticise the writings of persons whom I know and like than those of strangers: perhaps because I expect more from them, if, as in the present case, I know them to be very clever.
Dined yesterday at the Cadran Bleu, and went in the evening to see _La Tour d'Auvergne_, a piece founded on the life, and taking its name from a soldier of the time of the Republic.