Mail won't restore from backup

Hi everybody,
I had a problem with my Mail program recently where everything older than week was being deleted off my IMAP account.  I've since solved that problem, but now I'm having trouble restoring my missing emails from a previous backup.  I've tried twice to replace the contents in the ~(home)/Library/Mail folder from a backup on my external hard drive, and my missing emails will actually appear for a second in my inbox before disappearing again.  Does anyone have a clue why this is happening?
Thanks in advance for your help!  I definitely appreciate it!

Hi Pondini,
Thanks so much for responding!  It turns out that since my email is set up as an IMAP account, Mac Mail checks the mail server and deletes whatever messages I've restored from my backup to match what's on the server.  If you or anyone else comes across this problem, here is the solution:
I can confirm that you can indeed restore deleted IMAP email from a time machine backup. But what you have to do is this: FIRST disconnect your computer from the Internet. Then go to Users/yourusername/Library/Mail. Then enter time machine and go back to a time before you deleted the mail, and restore the whole ~/Library/Mail folder. You will see that all your mail looks like it's back - BUT before connecting to the Internet (which would make it all go away again), create a new mailbox - but make it a local mailbox (in other words create it On My Mac - not on MobileMe. Then copy all the mail from your MobileMe mailboxes to that local mailbox (or mailboxes if you prefer). Finally, connect to the Internet again. You will notice that immediately, all your MobileMe mailboxes disappear again (but you have their contents still on your newly created local mailboxes). Now you can create new MobileMe mailbox/es, and then drag the mail from your local mailboxes On My Mac - to the appropriate MobileMe mailboxes where you want them to be. Mail.app will now upload those messages to the MobileMe server (that could take quite a while). But all your mail will then be back where it was before you deleted it.

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