I do not care to pursue the argument with you about the change produced by death in the existence of a child. That which you say about it appears to me to involve some absolute contradictions; but I would rather postpone the discussion till we meet.

Charles Greville began writing to me upon these subjects, with reference to the rapidly declining health and strength of his and my friend, Mary Berry; over whose approaching death he lamented greatly, although she is upwards of eighty years old, and, according to my notions, must be ready and willing to depart.

Charles Greville's ideas, as far as I can make them out, appear to me those of a materialist. His chief regret seems to be for the loss of a person he cared for, and the departure of a remarkable member of his society. Beyond these two views of the subject he does not appear to me to go.

He has sent me, in the last letter I received from him, an extract from one of Sir James Mackintosh's, on the death of his wife, which he calls a "touching expression of grief," but which strikes me as rather a deplorable expression of grief without other alleviation than the dim and doubtful surmise of a mind the philosophy of which had never accepted the consolations of revelation, and yet, under the pressure of sorrow, rejected the narrower and shallower ones of stoical materialism.

You wish to hear of my arrangement with my cousin, Charles Mason, and I will tell you when it is decided on....

I have had a note from your sister, asking me to dine with them any day after the 16th, when they expect to come to town; but I have declined the invitation, because I do not wish to give up dining with my brother Henry, who comes to me every day when I don't act....

It seems strange that you should ask me if uncertainty, torments me. It torments me SO that I never endure it, even when the only escape from it is by some conclusion that I know to be rash and ill-advised.

"The woman who deliberates," says the saying, "is lost." My loss has been, and ever will be, through precipitation, not deliberation. To choose anything, a gown even, is a martyrdom to me, and, unlike the generality of my sex, I generally go into a shop, wishing to look at nothing, and knowing only the precise color, material, and quantity of the stuff I mean to purchase; for if I were to leave myself the smallest discretion—option, we will say (I can hardly leave myself what I haven't got)—I should infallibly buy something revoltingly ugly, out of mere impatience of the investigation and deliberation necessary to get something that pleased me. It is to save myself from the trouble of choice that I have made so many arbitrary and, to your thinking, absurd rules about the details of my daily life; but they spare me indecision about trifles, and I find it, therefore, comfortable to follow them.

I am at Morrison's hotel; the rooms are clean, comfortable, and cheerful, but the fare is bad and far from abundant; but if the charges are meagre in proportion, I shall be satisfied, if not with food, at least with equity.

My friend Arthur Malkin is here, as secretary to one of the members of the committee sent out from England to organize relief for your wretched countrymen. He is good and clever, and it is a great pleasure to me to have him here. I am sorry Mr. Labouchere [afterwards Lord Taunton] is away in Parliament. I wished particularly to have met him.

Lord Bessborough was at the play last night, and sent, after it was over, to invite me to the St. Patrick's ball on Wednesday; but I have declined, as I do not feel at all well enough for dissipations that would bore as well as tire me. I am told he means to ask me to dine at the Castle, which I rather dread, as it is not, I believe, allowable to refuse a representative of majesty; but I dread the exertion and the tedium of the thing, and have a particular dislike to the notion of meeting ——....

Good-bye, my dear.

Ever yours, FANNY.

[Our total ignorance of the laws of health and the accidents of sickness throws us necessarily for help upon the partial knowledge of physicians; but I am often reminded of what that admirable physician and charming man, Dr. Gueneau de Mussy, once said to me: "Madame, nous ne savons rien." "Ah mais!" remonstrated I, "cependant quelque chose?" "Absolument rien, madame," was the consolatory reply of one of the first medical men of Europe, under whose care both I and my sister then were, and to whose skilful and devoted care I attribute the preservation of my sister's life under circumstances of great peril.

The amateur performance given at the St. James's Theatre was Lord Ellesmere's translation of Victor Hugo's "Hernani," which had been acted sixteen years before under such very different circumstances, as far as I was concerned, at Bridgewater House. Mr. C—— was again the hero, as I the heroine, of the piece, but the part of Don Carlos was filled by Henry Greville, and that of the old Spanish noble by Mr. John Forster.

It was upon this performance that Mr. Macready passed such annihilating condemnation, not even excepting from his damnatory sentence of total incapacity his friend and admirer, John Forster, whose mode of delivering the part of Don Ruez bore ludicrous witness to Macready's own influence and example, if not direct teaching.

Macready does not even mention poor Forster; the entry in his diary runs thus: "Went to the amateur play at the St. James's Theatre; the play "Hernani," translated by Lord Ellesmere, was in truth an amateur performance. Greville and Craven were very good amateurs, but—tragedy by amateurs!"

The recital of a very graceful and touching poetical address, written by Lady Dufferin for the occasion, was part of the evening's work assigned to me, and as I was so weak and suffering from my late severe illness as to be hardly able to stand, it was with a sense of having certainly done my share in the evening's charity that I brought my part of the performance to a close.

While standing at the side-scene before going on to speak this address, dear Lord Carlisle brought me a most exquisite bunch of flowers, saying, "I know I ought to throw this at your head from the front of the house, but I would rather lay it at your feet here."

He then, to my great amazement, proceeded to spread out my satin train for me with a dexterity so remarkable that I asked him where he had served his apprenticeship. "Oh, at Court," said he, "at the drawing-rooms, where I have spread out and gathered up oceans of silk and satin, thousands of yards more than a counter-gentleman at Swan and Edgar's." He certainly had learned his business very well.

After leaving Dublin I entered into an arrangement with my cousin, Charles Mason, to become my agent, and make my engagements for me, undertaking the necessary correspondence with the managers who employed me, and looking after my money transactions with them for me. I stood greatly in need of some such assistance, being quite incompetent to the management of any business, and ignorant of all the usual modes of proceeding in theatrical affairs, to a degree that rendered it highly probable that my interests would suffer severely from my ignorance. My cousin, however, only rendered me this service for a very short time, as he left England for America soon after he undertook it; after which I reverted to my former condition of comparative helplessness, making my contracts with my employers as well as I could, and protecting myself from loss, and keeping out of troublesome complications and disputes, by the light of what natural reason and rectitude I possessed; always making my engagements by the night, and thus limiting any possible loss I might sustain or inflict upon my employers, to my salary and their receipts, for one performance. I also reduced my written transactions to the very fewest and briefest communications possible, with my various theatrical correspondents, and have more than once had occasion to observe that precision, conciseness, and a rigid adherence to mere statements of terms, times, and purely indispensable details of business, were not the distinguishing features of the letters of most of the men of business with whom I corresponded.]

QUEEN'S HOTEL, BIRMINGHAM, Saturday, May 29th. MY DEAR HAL,

How did you get through that dreary time after we parted? I did so repent not having left some of my "good angels," my flowers, with you; for though you do not care for them as I do, I love them so much that I think they would have seemed part of myself to you. What a vision remained to me of your lonely stay in that horrid room! But the day passed, and its sorrow, as they all do; and when this reaches you, you will be comfortable and rested, and among your own people again.

From Liverpool to Crewe I had companions in the ladies' carriage in which I was; after that I had it to myself, and lay stretched on the ground for rest the whole of the rest of the way.

I finished Dr. Mays's memoir, and read through half Harriet Martineau's book, before I reached this place.

Women are always said to talk more than men, and yet I have generally observed that when Englishwomen who are strangers to each other travel together, not a single word is exchanged between them; while men almost invariably fall into discourse together. This, I suppose, is partly from the want of subjects of general interest among women, such as politics, agriculture, national questions of importance, etc., which form excellent common ground of conversation for chance companions; while the questions of human society and considerations which concern men and women alike may be too important or too futile, too general or too special, to admit of easy discussion with strangers. The fact is, that most women's subjects of interest are so purely personal and individual that they can only be talked over with intimates.

I like Harriet Martineau's book very much, though perhaps not quite so much as I expected. What pleases me best is its spirit, the Christian faith in good, which is really delightful; though I cannot help thinking she mistakes in supposing that one must be very ill before one believes in God's sole law, good, more almost than in one's own existence.

The descriptions of natural objects are admirable, and the human loving-kindness excellent; but I think she pushes her propositions sometimes to the verge of paradox.... I am delighted to have it, and think it better reading than the Dublin Magazine.

I got here at a little after three. The house is upside down with cleansing processes, by reason of which I am put (till a smaller one can be got ready for me) into an amazingly lofty large room, with some good prints hung on the walls, and a pianoforte; seeing which privileges, I have declined transferring myself to any other apartment, and shall be made to pay accordingly.

Tell me of your errand to the theatre at Liverpool, and how you spent the day, and how the sea treated you, and everything about everything.

God bless you, my dear.

Ever yours, FANNY.

BRISTOL, Sunday, May 30th, 1847.

A thousand thanks, dear friend, for Liebig's book. You are right, I want something more to read. I finished Harriet Martineau (Oh, what ink! wait till I get some better) yesterday evening before tea, and the pamphlet on bread after I got into bed, and the "Liverpool Tragedy" (such a thing!) this morning in the railroad; so that your present of Liebig's book came to my wish and to my need, just as a gift from you should do; and I shall spend this Sunday afternoon in learning those wonderful things, and praising God for them.

I regret very much that I cannot recollect anything distinctly that I read, because the consequence is that books of an order calculated to be of the greatest use to me, books of fact and positive scientific knowledge, are really of less advantage to me than any others, because of their making no appeal to what I should call my emotional memory, and so they only profit me for the moment in which I read them. Works of imagination, of criticism, of history, and biography (even of metaphysical speculation), leave more with me than treatises of positive knowledge or scientific facts. From the others, a spirit, an animus, a general impression, a mental, moral, or intellectual accretion, remains with me; indeed, that is pretty much the whole result I obtain from anything I read. But books of knowledge, of scientific or natural facts, though they sometimes affect me beyond the finest poetry with an awe and delight that brings tears to my eyes, have but one invariable result with me, to add to my love and wonder of God. Their other uses depend, of course, upon the memory which retains and applies them subsequently, either in action or observation; and this I fail to do, by reason of forgetting: and it is a sorrow and a loss to me, because the whole world is in some sort transfigured, and life endowed with double significance, to those who are familiar with the details of the wonderful laws that govern them, and their self-communion must be as full of variety and interest as their conversation is to others.

I have infinite respect for knowledge; it is only second in value to wisdom, and to unite both is to be very fortunate—which word I use advisedly, for, though the nobler of the two, wisdom is allowed to all, knowledge is not.

I agree with you in what you say of Harriet Martineau's book: the good in it is her peculiar good (very good good it is, too), but it must be taken with the shadow of her bad upon it. It seems to me occasionally a little hard and dogmatical, and I have not liked it, upon the whole, as much as I expected, for it is rather less Christian than I expected; yet it is a very valuable book, and I was very thankful for it.

I shall send the recipe for making effervescing bread forthwith to Lenox, to Catherine Sedgwick, who is a martyr to dyspepsia and bad baking, and who, being herself an expert cook, will know how to have the staff of life prepared from these directions, so as to support instead of piercing her, as it mostly does, up among those country operators. They never have good bread there, and are all miserable in consequence, especially herself and her brother Charles, who have delicate stomachs and cannot endure the heavy sour concoction which they are nevertheless obliged to swallow by way of daily bread. (I almost wonder how they manage to say the Lord's Prayer petition for it.)

The note you forwarded me from Liverpool was another scream from that mad manageress about Macbeth. I wonder if her whole life is passed in such agonies; I think it must be worse than the greatest bodily pain.

Only think, my dear, on arriving here, and inquiring for Hayes, I recollected that I had sent her to Bath and not to Bristol! "Consekens is," as Mr. Sam Weller says (but alas for you! you don't know Pickwick), that I have had to send off a porter from this house to Bath, per railway, to reclaim my erring maid, and fetch her hither; and, being Sunday, fewer trains go between the two places than usual, and she cannot get here till near four o'clock this afternoon, until which time I dare not trust myself to think of the state of mind of the abandoned (in the perfectly honest sense of the word) Bridget or Biddy Hayes; indeed, I shall not get her here till six this evening, and I only hope that I may then.

What a moon there was last night! and how it made me think of you, as it shone into the dark lofty room at Birmingham, where I sat playing and singing very sadly all by myself! The sea must have been as smooth as glass, and you cannot have been sick, even with your best endeavor.

The road from Birmingham here is quite pretty; the country in a most exquisite state of leaf and blossom; the crops look extremely well along this route; and the little cottage gardens, which delight my heart with their tidy cheerfulness, are so many nosegays of laburnum, honeysuckle, and lilac.

The stokers on all the engines that I saw or met this morning had adorned their huge iron dragons with great bunches of hawthorn and laburnum, which hung their poor blossoms close to the hissing hot breath of the boilers, and looked wretched enough. But this dressing up the engines, as formerly the stage-coach horses used to be decked with bunches of flowers at their ears on Mayday, was touching.

I suppose the railroad men get fond of their particular engine, though they can't pat and stroke it, as sailors do of their ship. Speculate upon that form of human love. I take it there is nothing which, being the object of a man's occupation, may not be made also that of his affection, pride, and solicitude, too. Were we—people in general, I mean—Christians, forms of government would be matters of quite secondary importance; in fact, of mere expediency. A republic, such as the American, being the slightest possible form of government, seems to me the best adapted to an enlightened, civilized Christian community, a community who deserve that name; and, you know, the theory of making people what they should be is to treat them better than they deserve—an axiom that holds good in all moral questions, of which political government should be one.

This hotel is charming, clean, comfortable, cheerful, very nice.

Farewell. Give my kind regards to your people, and believe me

Ever yours, FANNY.

MY DEAR HAL,

Go to Atkinson's and Co., 31, College Green, Dublin, and Pay L8 13s. for my sister, and get a receipt for it, and send it to me, and do this just as fast as ever you love me—that is, this very minute. I will repay you when we meet, or as much sooner as you may wish.

I have this morning received a note of eleven lines from Rome from Adelaide, without one single word of anything in it but a desire that I will immediately pay this debt for her; not a syllable about her husband, her children, herself, or any created thing, but Messrs. Atkinson and Co., and L8 13s. Therefore do what she bids me, and I ask you "right away," as the Americans say, that I may send this afflicted soul her receipt, and bid her be at rest.

That they are still in Rome I know only by the address, which she does put, though not the date; as a compensation for which, however, she heads her letter with the sum she wishes me to pay, thus—

Rome, Trinita dei Monti. L8 13s.

—a new way of dating a letter, it strikes me. She must have had poplin on the brain.

I wrote to you yesterday, my dear, and therefore have little to say to you. After all, I had directed my poor maid perfectly write! (look how I've spelt this, in the tumult of my feelings and confusion of my thoughts!), and she arrived, but not till three o'clock in the afternoon, paper in hand, with the direction I had myself written as large as life—"The Great Western Hotel, Bristol." The fact is that I had made so sure that she would be here before I was, that, not finding her on my arrival, I made equally sure that I had misdirected her to Bath, and despatched one of the hotel porters thither to hunt for her, which he did, sans intermission, for two hours, and on his return had the pleasure of finding her here. What a capital thing a clear head is, to be sure! At least, I imagine so....

I have just come back from rehearsal at the theatre, where I found a letter from Emily, containing a bad account of her mother, and a most affectionate, cordial, illegible scrawl from poor dear old Mrs. Fitzhugh herself.

I also received a letter from Henry Greville, full of strictures upon my carriage and deportment on the stage, and earnestly entreating me to suffer his coiffeur ("a clean, tidy foreigner") to whitewash me after the approved French method, i.e., to anoint my skin with cold cream, and then cover it with pearl powder; and this, not only my face, but my arms, neck, and shoulders. Don't you see me undergoing such a process, and submitting to such "manipulation"?

I have read more than half through Liebig, and am always tempted to glance at the paragraphs ahead to see what wonders they contain. I have not yet consulted the last chapter for the "winding-up of the story." The marvels in the midst of which we exist are a "story without an end."

I find some of his details of "quantity" a little puzzling sometimes, but nothing else, and the book is delightful.

Charles Mason drank tea with me last night, and talked well, and with a good deal of information, about chemistry. He has read somewhat, and has some superficial knowledge of various subjects; moreover, is a judge of physiognomy, for he said he never saw a countenance with a more beautiful expression of goodness than yours. Evidently, like Beatrice, he can "see a church by daylight." Isn't it a pity that he can no longer be my agent? Were you not struck with his great resemblance to your idol, John Kemble? My mother used to say he was more like his son than his nephew; and never having seen his uncle even, the curious collateral likeness showed itself in all sorts of queer tricks in his delivery and deportment on the stage, where, in spite of his resemblance to his celebrated kinsman, he is a most lamentable actor. Of course, being an educated man, he speaks with "good discretion;" of the "emphasis" the less said the better.

I go to Bath to-morrow morning, and remain there until Thursday, when I return here to act Lady Macbeth and then go back again to represent that same lady at Bath either Friday or Saturday.

Farewell, my dear. God bless you.

Ever yours, FANNY.

BATH, Wednesday, June 2d.

I have just had a long visit from Mr. C——, who is here, and who came to see me this morning with a young niece of his—a fair, sweet-looking girl of about eighteen, who, strangely enough, asked me a good many questions about my affairs.... At the end of their visit, I found that the young lady, while talking and listening to me, had torn up a visiting-card and, with the fragments of it, put together on the table the outline of a tiny Calvary, the cross upon a heap of rocks. I suppose she is a Catholic, like her uncle, and I wonder why so many religious people of all sorts and denominations take it for granted that others stand in need of "Hints to Religion." ...

I was reminded (unnecessarily) of you at the theatre yesterday evening when, immediately after the hateful stage-warning at my dressing-room door of "Overture on, ma'am!" (the summons to the actors who are to begin a piece), I heard the orchestra break forth into your favorite strain of "Sad and fearful was the story." ...

The instinctive horror of suffering of our poor human bodies is pitiful. What a sorry martyr I should have made! though I think I should not so much object to others inflicting pain upon me as to inflicting it upon myself,—that seems to me such an absurd and disagreeable work of supererogation, I should never have been a self-body-torturer for the salvation of my soul....

You would have been amused yesterday evening if you had been at the theatre with me. The weather was so beautifully bright that I could not bear to shut the shutters and light the gas, so I dressed by the blessed light of heaven, and was sitting all rouged and arrayed for my part, working, with my back to the window, when a small mob of poor little ragged urchins, who had climbed over a railing that separated the theatre from a mean-looking street behind it, collected round it, and, clambering on each other's shoulders, clustered and hung like a swarm of begrimed bees at the window, which was near the ground, to enjoy the sight of me and my finery. Bridget, who is kind-hearted and fond of children, turned the dresses that were hanging up right side out for the edification of the poor little ragamuffins, and their comments were exceedingly funny and touching. We could hear all that they said through the window—how they wondered if I put them beautiful dresses on one by one, or over each other; the rose in my hair, which you gave me, and the roses in my shoes, made them scream with delight; and if you could have heard the pathetic earnestness with which one of them exclaimed, "Oh my! don't you wish them ere windies was cleaner!" for the dirt-dimmed glass obstructed the full glory of the vision not a little. Poor little creatures! my heart ached with compassion for them and their hard conditions, while they hung and clung in ecstatic amazement at my frippery.

The house at Bristol the first night was wretched, my share of it only L14; here last night it was much better, but I do not yet know the proceeds of it. Charles Mason has latterly dropped a hint or two about intending shortly to go to America, so that I dare say he will be quite prepared to terminate his present arrangement with me.

In the railroad, coming from Bristol to Bath, I met Edward Romilly, a kind and pleasant acquaintance of mine. I had Liebig's book in my hand, which he said was rather severe railroad reading, and proceeded to enlighten me as to the unsoundness of some of the author's positions and deductions. Now, you know, Edward Romilly married Mrs. Marcet's daughter, and, I take it for granted, in virtue of such a mother-in-law, is wise upon natural philosophy; but still, when one's ignorance is as huge and one's faith as implicit as mine,—when one's one endless, supreme question about everything is Pilate's bewildered, "What is Truth?"—when from history, science, literature, art, nature, one receives every impression with the child's yearning query, "But is it true?" it makes one feel desperate and deplorable thus to have one teacher contradict and discredit another. After all, all knowledge by degrees turns to ignorance, as it were, by dint of more knowledge; and human progress, passing from stage to stage in its incessant onward flight, leaves deserted, from day to day and hour to hour, its temporary abiding-places. There is no rest for those who learn, and ignorance is a great deal more complete and perfect a thing, here, at any rate, than knowledge; with which paradox let me hug my ignorance, only regretting that I ever spoiled it by learning even so much as my alphabet.

In spite of Mrs. Marcet's son-in-law, I have finished Liebig, and now have only "Wilhelm Meister" to read, which is one of the most wonderful books that ever was written. I have read it often, and each time I do so I think it more wonderful than before. Do you remember poor Mignon's last song?—"Sorrow hath made me early old, make me again for ever young!" No wonder you love youth, my dear; in heaven there are no old people.

The gardens in which this house stands are exquisite, and full of lovely children, who are a perpetual delight to me.

Good-bye, my dear.

BATH, Friday, June 4th. DEAR HAL,

... I have just spent a delightful hour with three charming little creatures, children of the master of this hotel, for whom I have been buying toys, and who have been amusing themselves with them and allowing me a time of enchanting participation.

I drove this morning, because you told me to do so, through the piece of ground they call the park here. It is extremely pretty, and I never grow weary of admiring the orderly love of beauty of our people.

I have had another long visit from Mr. C—— this morning.... Certainly novelists invent nothing more improbable than life.

I had an explanation with Charles Mason yesterday afternoon, and he did not appear at all annoyed at my intention of discontinuing our present arrangement. I shall give up to him the entire receipts for one night, as else I am afraid he will hardly do more than cover his expenses. Then—the money that worthy man at Liverpool borrowed from me, which I shall assuredly never see again, and my travelling and living expenses deducted—my clear gains for this fortnight will be L68. It is not much, but all that much better than nothing. I shall be in town next week, and had intended, at the end of it, to go down to Bannisters; but Emily writes me that they cannot have me then, so I shall probably go to Plymouth, where they want me to act, and after that return to town again, and organize some more country engagements for myself; for I can't afford to be doing nothing. I go to town to-morrow morning, and shall be glad to be at home again. I am writing with a vile iron pen, that has neither mind, soul, nor body.

God bless you, dear. Good-bye.

Ever yours, FANNY.

ROYAL HOTEL, PLYMOUTH, June 16th. MY DEAR HAL,

Do not again put that sponge, saturated with that stuff, in your letters. The whiff of it I got accidentally in one I received some days ago was very pleasant, but the quantity you send me to-day is too much, and has given me a headache, and made me sick. Such virtue is there in proportion! Such immense difference in only more or less!

You bid me lump my answers to you, but I hate to do that. I cannot bear to defraud you in quantity, though inevitable necessity condemns me to the disparity of quality in our communications; but to give you poor measure in both seems to me too bad....

I shall act here on Friday, and leave for Exeter on Saturday, and I shall act there one or two nights, but I do not yet know precisely how often. I expect to be in London by the end of next week, and to remain there for a week, after which I shall probably go for some nights to Southampton, so that, in a sort of way, I shall see Emily, and she will see me; further than this I have not at present decided. I have yet to visit the Midland Counties, where I have had engagements offered me, and York, Sheffield, and Leeds; after which I shall probably go on to Scotland. But all this is at present without fixed date.

Some time in the summer, I have promised to visit the C——s (Roman acquaintances of ours) at Brighton; and I shall stay some time in Scotland at a place called Carolside, with that very nice Mrs. Mitchell, with whom I am fast growing into a fast friendship. We shall be a strange company of widows at her house—herself, T—— M——, poor Emily de Viry, and poorer myself.

These are my floating plans for the summer. Of course you will hear into what specific arrangements they consolidate themselves by degrees.

All the theatres where I act—indeed, as far as I can see, all the theatres throughout the country—are Theatres Royal; and with very good reason, for they are certainly all equally patronized by royalty.

I forgot to tell you that before leaving London, I carried your bag, i.e. my worsted-work, to your nephew's lodging, beseeching him, in a civil note, to take charge of it for you. I have received a civil note from him in reply, professing his readiness to do so, but adding that he will not be in Dublin till the dissolution of Parliament, which will not take place till the middle of July; in reply to which, I wrote him another civil note, telling him I would apprise you of this, and then you could either leave the bag in his custody, till he went to Ardgillan, or inform him of any method by which you might choose to have it forwarded to you more immediately.

I am not satisfied with the way in which it is made up; my own work was thick and clumsy enough, and I think they have finished the bag with a view to matching, rather than counteracting, these defects in the original composition. However, its value to you I know will be none the less for this; though, as I also know you are very particular, I wish it had been more neatly and lightly finished. I have put the strip of worsted-work you wished preserved inside the bag, and would humbly advise you to cut it up for kettle-holders, for which purpose it appears to me infinitely better adapted than for the housewife you proposed to make of it. However, you know I am shy about giving advice, so never mind what I say....

The weather is cold, rainy, windy, in short, odiously tempestuous; in spite of which I went into the sea yesterday, and shall do so every day while I am here; the freshness of the salt water is delicious.

Now, at this present moment, when I was about to close this letter, comes another from you, and I shall lump that in this answer; for 'tis absurd merely to wait till to-morrow that I may take up another sheet of paper to write to you upon, when in all human probability I shall have nothing new whatever to tell you.

I find that Charles Mason has made arrangements for me with the Exeter manager, and that I shall act there four nights, and therefore be there all next week, and only return to London next Saturday week. This was in contemplation when I came here, but had not been determined on until to-day.

I have had a very affectionate letter from Lady Dacre, asking me to go down to the Hoo and stay some time with them, which I will do between some of my coming engagements.... No, my dear Harriet, you cannot imagine, and I cannot say, how I shrink from demonstrating a great deal of the affection that I feel; there are no words or sign adequate to it that I should not be reluctant to use, and I think this is at variance with the unhesitating and vehement expression of thought and opinion, and mere impression that is natural to me: but we are all more or less compounded of contradictions, and I more than less.

At the Exeter Station, coming down to this place, an obliging omnibus or coach driver offered to carry me to Torquay if I was bound thither. Wouldn't it have been nice if I had said Yes, and you and Dorothy had still been there? but you weren't, so I said No.... Both the Grevilles are friends of ours. Henry has been very intimate with Adelaide for a long time. He has a great many good qualities, and, though essentially a society man, has a good deal of principle; he is not very clever, but bright and pleasant, and very amiable and charming. His brother Charles has better brains, and is altogether a cleverer person. He is a man of the world, and more selfishly worldly, I think, than Henry, whose standard of right is considerably the higher of the two; indeed, Charles Greville's right always appears to me a mere synonym for expedient, and when I tell him so, he invariably says "they are the same thing," which I do not believe. He is, unfortunately, deaf, but excellent company in spite of that. I met him the day before I left London, at dinner at Lady Essex's, and he told me he and Lord de Maulay were going to start next week on a riding tour through England, beginning with Devonshire. I think it very probable that I shall see him in Exeter next week, as he is to be at the Duke of Bedford's in that neighborhood. He talked eloquently of the beauty of the scenery they were going through, and very seriously urged me to join their party, and ride over England with them, saying it would be a delightfully pleasant expedition—of which I have no doubt, or of the entire propriety of my joining it, and "cavalcading" through Great Britain in his and Lord de Maulay's company.

Now I'll tell you what I've done to-day—my holiday. In the first place it poured with rain all the morning, so I sent for a pair of battledores and a shuttlecock, and when Charles Mason came to render up last night's account, I made him come into a beautiful large ball-room I had discovered in this house, and took a good breathing; and he, being like Hamlet, "fat and scant of breath," took it hard.

NEW LONDON INN, EXETER, Monday, June 21st. DEAR HAL,

Thanks for the purse, which I received this morning. I think you must imagine these country managers pay me as the monks did Correggio, in copper; perhaps, too, you have visions of me carrying my pay home on my back, as he did. (I forget whether that sad story is among the traditions exploded by modern truth.)

You have not received my last letter from Plymouth, or you would not have sent me again this tremendous "smell." I beseech you, dear Hal, not to saturate your paper any more with Neroli, or whatever you call it; it gives me a headache, and turns me sick.

My present address is as above, and I shall remain here until Saturday morning, when I return to town.

I only like the leather purse because you have given it to me, and though that makes me love it, it does not make me like it—my preference is for the pretty, colored, delicately woven purses, through whose meshes the gold and silver smiles and glances, that you see me use, or abuse, as you think, and as their use is to be worn out, I am not much afflicted at their dropping into holes, and in due process of time fulfilling their destiny.

This inn is in the middle of the town, and an old, dingy, dull house; and I have an old, dingy, dark sitting-room, and the only trees I see are two fine felled elm trunks, which I have been industriously sketching.

The cathedral here is a grand old church, and I went yesterday afternoon to service there; but the choir was full, so I sat on a sort of pauper's wooden bench, just outside the choir, and under the beautiful porch that forms the entrance to it; and heard the chanting, but nothing else. I had Hayes with me, and she earnestly entreated me to sit with my feet upon hers, to protect myself from the cold stone pavement; was not that touching and nice of her? I am sure I ought to be grateful for such a comfort as she is to me. Poor thing! she has been in great trouble about her mother. When she was in Ireland she took a small sum of about ten pounds, which belonged to her mother, and placed it in the hands of an aunt of hers, in whom she had implicit trust, wishing to withdraw the money from the possible risk of its being got from her mother by her brother, who lives with her,—he being selfish and unprincipled and likely to take it, and her mother affectionate and self-denying and likely to give it to him. And now poor Hayes gets word from her mother that her aunt says she can neither give her money nor money's worth, owing to the badness of the times; which of course troubles my poor maid very much, for she says her aunt is a woman of substance. However, she does not seem to think the money will ultimately be lost to her mother, but only inconveniently withheld for a time.

At Plymouth, I had a very kind and pressing invitation from Lady Elizabeth Bulteel—Lord Grey's daughter, whom I have known for some time—to go and stay at her pretty place, Flete, two miles from Plymouth; but having to come on here, I could not go to her, which I was very sorry for. She sent me the most exquisite flowers, which I brought away with me, and which are still consoling me here.

Good-bye; God bless you, my dear.

Ever yours, FANNY.

NEW LONDON INN, EXETER, Wednesday, June 23d.

I do not plead guilty to general inconsistency, but only to particular inconsistency, in a particular instance, dear Hal.... You are quite welcome to accuse me of it, however; but as in your last letter you imply that I accept the accusation, I beg leave to state distinctly that I do not.... Not, indeed, that I make any pretensions to that order of coherency of action and opinion which is generally called consistency: my principles are few, simple, and comprehensive, and I rather desire so to embrace them with my heart, mind, and soul, that my conduct may habitually conform to them, than am careful in every instance of action to see whether I am observing them. Somebody said very well that principles were moral habits; and our habits become unconscious and spontaneous: and so I think should our consistency be, and not a sort of moral rule or measure to be applied and adjusted to each exigency as it occurs, to produce a symmetrical moral appearance.

I think one reason why I appear, and perhaps am, inconsistent is because I seldom have any consideration for expediency—what I should call secondary rules of conduct; and I have not much objection to contradicting my course of action in the present hour by that of the next, provided at each time I am endeavoring to do what seems best to me. I desire a certain frame of mind that my conduct may flow habitually from it, without constant reference to outward coherency. In the course of life-long endeavor and practice, I suppose, this may be achieved. But do not think me presumptuous if I say that I think people are generally too afraid of appearing inconsistent, too desirous to seem reasonable,—in short, more anxious upon the whole about what they do than what they are. Of course, the one will much depend upon the other; but they will match well enough without an everlasting comparison of shades of color, if they are really in harmony, and, at all events, will certainly harmonize even if they do not precisely match: there's a woman's shopping illustration for you.... Of course you will understand well enough that I have not referred to the capital inconsistency of which poor St. Paul so pathetically complained—wishing to do right and doing wrong,—nor would you have charged me individually and specially with this, alas! universal moral incoherency.

This is my holiday, and I have been spending it between two famous nursery-gardens in the neighborhood of Exeter, and the cathedral.

These great gardeners send up their exquisite and precious plants to the London horticultural exhibitions, and I saw many for whose beauty and variety gold and silver medals had been awarded to their foster-father florists. The masters of both these establishments very courteously went over them with me, showing me the hot-houses where their choicest and rarest plants were kept; there were some, such exquisite and wonderful creatures, lovely to the eye, delicious to the smell—Patagonians, Javanese, from the Cordilleras, from Peru, from Chili, from Borneo,—the flower tribes of the whole earth.

Then, again, they showed me little pots of fine sand, covered with bell glasses, where the eye could hardly detect a point or shade of sickly green upon the surface,—the promise of some unique foreign flower, sent from its savage home in the forests of another hemisphere, to blossom at the Chiswick horticultural exhibition, and win medals for the careful cultivators, who have watched with faith—assuredly in this case "the evidence of things not seen"—its precarious growth and doubtful development.

One of these gentlemen horticulturists interested me extremely by his own fervent enthusiasm about his plants. He showed me two perishing-looking miserable dried-up twigs, and said, "Those are the only specimens of their kind in the kingdom. They come from Chili, and when healthy bear a splendid blossom as large as a tulip. These are just between life and death: I fear we may kill them with kindness, we are so anxious about them." He told me they had a flower-hunter out in South America, and another in India. And now I must go to bed, because it is twelve o'clock.

I brought home some heavenly flowers from these earthly paradises, and then went and spent the rest of my afternoon in the cathedral—a beautiful old building, of various dates and architecture, the whole effect of which is extremely picturesque and striking.

Good-night, my dear.

I am ever yours, FANNY.

ORCHARD STREET, Tuesday, August 24th.

Rachel has been acting at Manchester, to houses of sixty pounds (her nightly salary being one hundred and twenty), and this because Jenny Lind is going there. I must confess I have no patience with this—as if the rich Manchester merchants could not afford to treat themselves to both! Rachel is really pre-eminent in her art, and so this provokes me.... I dined with the Miss Berrys at Richmond on Wednesday, and met dear old Lady Charlotte Lindsay, who inquired as usual most affectionately after you. Mrs. Dawson Damer dined there, too, and said she remembered being as a very young girl at Wroxton Abbey (Lord Guildford's), and seeing you there a very young girl too.

I began this letter two days ago, and am in all the full wretchedness of packing up. I set off to-morrow for Mrs. Mitchell's, where I hope to be on Thursday afternoon. I shall reach York to-morrow, at three o'clock, and intend sleeping there, of which I have written to apprise Dorothy, as I hope to see her for an hour or two in the evening.

I am obliged to give up my Norwich engagement, which I am very sorry for; but the fast and loose style of the correspondence about it makes it impossible to fix any time for going there. The manager first asked me to go there in August, but now, because Jenny Lind is going there, he wants to put me off till the third week in September, at which time I expect to be in Glasgow, the manager of that theatre having written to me thence that October is not a good month there, and begged me to come in September. I am sorry to lose my Norwich engagement, but cannot help it. I have heard nothing more from the Princess's Theatre.

... My father talks of giving up his readings, and I have therefore spoken to Mitchell, of the St. James's Theatre, about giving some myself, and find him very willing to undertake the whole "speculation" and business, not only in London but all over the provinces, with me and for me; so that I do not feel quite as uncomfortable about the uncertainty of an engagement at the Princess's as I might have done.

Mr. Mitchell is a Liberal, and an honest man, too, and I shall be quite safe in his hands; in the mean time I shall be very glad to be at Carolside instead of in London, though to-day and yesterday the weather has been very cold and chilly, and in Scotland is not likely to be warmer.

Do you hear of this horrid murder in Paris [that of the Duchesse de Praslin, by her husband]? Ever so many people that I know here knew the unhappy woman and her still more wretched husband; and the woman who has been accused of having instigated the crime was little Lady Melgund's governess for six years.

Good-bye, my dear.

I am ever yours, FANNY.

[Mademoiselle de Luzzy, the governess of the Duc de Praslin's children, was acquitted upon his trial of any complicity in his crime; that of which she was not acquitted, however, was, turning the hearts of her pupils against their unfortunate mother, and endeavoring to establish her position and authority in the duchess's home and family, at her expense. By a most strange turn of circumstance, Mademoiselle de Luzzy, thus connected with the great world of Paris and implicated in one of its most tragic occurrences, went to the United States, where she married a country clergyman, whose family belonged to the peaceful population of Stockbridge—one of the loveliest villages in the "Happy Valley" of the Housatonic. The residence of the Sedgwick family in this charming place attracted to it many foreigners of mark and distinction; but few, certainly, whose claims to notoriety were so peculiar and painful as this lady's.

Mrs. Mitchell, of Carolside, was a Scotchwoman of an Aberdeen family. She was my dear friend for many years, and a perfectly charming person. Her face was exquisitely pretty and her figure faultless; she had very peculiar eyes of a lightish hazel, with such long lashes that it seemed occasionally as if her eyes were shining through a soft haze of golden brown rays. She spoke with a slight Scotch accent, the "winning Scottish speech" which Secretary Philips writes of as one of Mary Stuart's peculiar charms; and she was personally my notion of that "much blamed, much worshipped" modern Helen. She had remarkable decision of character and force of will, with the gentlest and most feminine appearance and manner; she was humorous and witty, and an incomparable mimic. She was a woman of admirably high principle and rectitude, and in every way as attractive as she was estimable. Her eldest son was proprietor of a charming place, Carolside, just over the Scottish border, and had hardly come of age and inherited it when the Crimean war broke out and compelled him, then a young officer in the army, to leave his pleasant home prospects and encounter the threatening aspect of "grim-visaged war." His mother, whose widowed life had been devoted to him and his younger brother, also a soldier, fluttered after her dear ones to the Crimea, and had the joy to get them safe back from the "world's great snare uncaught."

Lady M—— and Mrs. Mitchell were attached and almost inseparable friends for many years, occupying the same house in London, travelling on the Continent together, and when in Scotland living together at Mrs. Mitchell's pretty home, Carolside, or hiring some house in the Highlands together. Emily de Viry (afterwards, alas! Emily de Revel) I met again, for the first time for many years, at Carolside. She was the daughter of our friends Mr. and Mrs. Basil Montague, and half-sister of my kind friend Mrs. Procter, and a very intimate friend of my sister Adelaide. She was an extremely interesting person, the tragic close of whose life can never be thought of without profound regret. She had married her cousin Count Charles de Viry, and after years of widowhood she married again the Count Adrien de Revel, Sardinian Ambassador in England, to whom she had not been united a week when they were both carried off by the cholera, which was then raging in Genoa: the same paper which announced their marriage brought the tidings of their untimely death to me. During this visit of mine to Carolside M. de Revel came there for a few days; I was well acquainted with him, and liked him very much.]

CAROLSIDE, EARLSTON, Sunday, 29th.

I am no more in London, my dear Hal, but in one of the sweetest places I ever was in, which, as you know, is a great delight to me.

I am only just beginning to recover from the effects of the journey hither, which, though divided into two days, made me very unwell.... Surely, you never meant, in spite of my invariable habit of replying to all your questions, that I should ever attempt an answer to that suggestion of your love and sorrow which, in speaking of your brother [Barry S——, dead many years before], makes you exclaim, "What now is his nature?" ...

I have been sorrier to think of the death of Dr. Combe than I was to hear of it, when, as is always the case with me, my first feeling was one almost of joy and congratulation. I never have any other emotion on first hearing of a good man's death. I have an instantaneous sense of relief, as it were, for such a one, of freer breathing, of expanded powers; of infirmity, pain, sorrow, trouble, fleshly hinderance, and earthly suffering for ever laid in the grave and left behind; and that glorious creature, a noble human soul, soaring into a purer atmosphere proper to it, and promoted to such higher duties as may well be deemed rewards for duties well fulfilled on earth.

After a little while I began to cry, thinking of that sweet, beaming, intelligent, benevolent countenance, that I am never to see here again; but this was crying for myself, not him. I am truly grieved for his brother, and all who knew, and loved, and have lost so excellent a friend.

I have a paper in my possession still, which he laughingly drew up and gave me when I was a girl in Edinburgh, a sort of legal document, binding him to appear to me after he was dead; and one or two evenings, as I lay on my sofa alone in Orchard Street, I thought of this, and could not help fancying that if indeed it had been possible he could have appeared to me, the familiar trust and affection with which I always regarded him would have been paramount to all fears and wonders in the first moment of my seeing him.

I have heard nothing more of my engagement at the Princess's Theatre, and begin to think that perhaps I shall not hear anything more about it; but I scarcely expected to do so before the end of November, because till then I should not be wanted there, and I dare say the manager will leave me as long a time as possible to consider of his offers and my acceptance or rejection of them.

I am charmed with my hostess. She is exceedingly pretty—a great virtue, as you know, in my estimation; she is upright, true, pious, and uncommonly reasonable and judicious: am I not right to be charmed with her? Then, too, she is most kind, gentle, considerate, and affectionate to me, and esteems me, as I believe I have before told you, far beyond my deserts—who can resist that bribe?

Upon several points upon which I differ from people's usual modes of thinking and feeling, I find there is a great similarity in our views; and I feel as if I might thank God for an addition to the treasure of excellent people's love that He has comforted my life withal; and count another friend added to those who have been such infinite blessings to me.

I am left to conclude that Mrs. Grote was so absorbed in her interest in Mademoiselle Jenny Lind that I vanished utterly from her mind; for after coming to see me just before I went down to Bannisters and pressing me to go to the Beeches when I returned, I never heard another word about it, or even set eyes upon her again.

I have been with your precious Dorothy, who came, both to my joy and sorrow, to meet me at the railroad station, with her poor face covered with that hideous respirator, and speaking when she had it off as if she still had it on, her voice was so pale and dim. It grieved me that she should have made an exertion that I feared might injure her, and yet I was delighted to see her and most grateful for her extreme kindness in thus troubling herself. She came, too, with her hands full of flowers (my "good angels" brought to me by your "good angel," which seemed to me pretty and proper, was it not?), and carried me straight off to Fulford [Miss Wilson's home near York], where, in spite of much pain and exhaustion consequent upon the long railroad journey, I passed a blessed few hours with her, though our talk inevitably was of much sorrow....

I have not had time yet to see anything of the condition of the people about this place. The villages and cottages we passed coming hither all struck me as poor and comfortless compared with England; but the less cleanly and tidy habits of the Scotch, and their almost universal practice of going barefoot—at least the women and children,—give an impression of greater poverty and discomfort than really exist, I believe.

I have not yet received my American letters.... I am to act three nights at Glasgow. I think Kelso is the town nearest Carolside, and that is fourteen miles distant; the post town or village is Earlston (Ercildown), a mile from the house. The whole region belongs to poetry and legend and romance. The Eildon hills overlook it, and Thomas the Rhymer haunts it, and the Scotch ballads are full of it. Do you know—oh no, you know no songs, you unfortunate!—"Leader haughs and Yarrow," or that exquisite melody beloved of Mendelssohn:—

"Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny bride! Busk ye, busk ye, my winsome marrow!"

(isn't that an odd term of endearment to one's mistress?)

"Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny bride! And think nae mair on the braes of Yarrow"?

Then there is that lovely ditty "Gala Water," which I always sing in honor of my young host, who is a sort of Laird of Galashiel. The whole place is full of such charming suggestions and associations. The Leader, a lovely, clear, rapid, shallow, sparkling trout-stream, makes a sudden bend across the lawn, opposite the drawing-room and dining-room windows here (last October the pixie got vexed at something and very nearly rushed in to the house); and early before breakfast this morning I walked along the banks of the stream, and then knee deep up its bright waters, and then over the breezy hills, "O'er the hills, amang the heather," whence I watched its gleaming course between red-colored rocks, like walls of porphyry or Roman tufa, and through corn-fields, and by tufted woods, and felt for an hour as if there was no bitterness in life....

I shall remain here till September 11th, when I go to Glasgow, where I expect to act on the 13th. I shall be very sorry to go away, but shall certainly by that time have had enjoyment enough to feel that it would be unwise to tempt the inevitable decree which makes all pleasure and happiness short-lived here, and which, when we strive to retain or detain them, makes us wise through some disappointment or disenchantment, which it is still wiser to anticipate and avoid.

Farewell, dear Hal.

I am ever as ever yours, FANNY.

[Carolside was situated just beyond the Border in Scotland, in that region of romantic and poetical traditions, full of the charm of early legendary and ballad lore, of the associations of Burns's songs and Scott's Border minstrelsy, pervaded with the old superstitions, half-beliefs, dating from as far back as the days of Thomas the Rhymer, and the later powerful influence of the Wizard of the North, the mighty master-magician of our own day.

Melrose, Dryburgh, and Abbotsford, Smailholme, and Beamerside, were all within easy distance of it; "the bonnie broom of Cowdenknowes" bloomed in its neighborhood; the Gala, the Leader, the Tweed, the Yarrow, ran singing through the lovely region, the exquisite melodies that have been inspired by their wild scenery. It was a region of natural beauty, heightened by every association that could add to its charm. The Eildon Hills were our landmarks in all our walks and rides and drives: and Ercildown, modernized into Earlston, the picturesque post-village at our gates.]

CAROLSIDE, EARLSTON, September 5th. MY DEAR LADY DACRE,

... Of the advantageous engagement which you heard I had concluded I cannot speak with any certainty, for it never was settled definitively, and I begin to think will not be concluded. I think it may have been nothing more than a feint on the part of the manager of the Princess's Theatre, who has been urged by Mr. Macready's friends to engage me to act with him, and who, as he will not give me my terms, has, I think, perhaps merely tendered me an arrangement that he knew I would not accept, in order to be able to say that he had endeavored to make an arrangement with me. I am very sorry for this, for employment during the winter months in London is what I much desired. However, "there is a soul of good even in things evil," and the later experiences of my life have left me little sensibility to spend upon crosses of this description.

Not to be able to work for my own maintenance would indeed be a serious calamity to me; but if I fail of a theatrical engagement I shall fall back upon my original plan, to me so far preferable, of giving readings. I do not think that now, after a whole year of apparent relinquishment of that pursuit, my father has any thought of resuming it, which leaves me free to make the attempt.

I am staying with a friend at a place on the Scottish Border; the Leader, famous in song, runs across the lawn; we are four miles from Melrose, and about as many from Abbotsford; the country is lovely, and full of poetical and romantic associations.

I remain here another week, and then go to Glasgow, where I am to act; after that I expect to pass three weeks in Edinburgh, between my two cousins, Cecilia Combe (whom you remember as Cecy Siddons) and a daughter of my dear friend Mrs. Harry Siddons, who married Major Mair, and is living happily and prosperously in beautiful Edinburgh.

I must either act or give readings during this time, as I can in no wise afford to be idle.

It was a great disappointment to me to boil by B——'s very door on my way here [Miss Barbarina Sullivan, Lady Dacre's granddaughter, now the Hon. Lady Grey], but my plans had been all disarranged and confused by other people, and I was most unwillingly compelled to pass by Howick. I have written to offer myself to her in the last week of October on my way back to London, and heartily hope she may be able and willing to receive me, as I long to see her in her new home.

Pray give my kind regards to Mrs. Brand. You ought to be of the greatest use, comfort, and pleasure to each other, endowed, as you both are, with the especial graces of age and youth.

With affectionate respects to Lord Dacre, believe me

Ever yours, FANNY.

[Miss Susan Cavendish had married the Hon. Thomas Brand, Lord Dacre's nephew and heir. When I wrote this letter young Mr. and Mrs. Brand lived a good deal at the Hoo with my kind old friends.]

CAROLSIDE, EARLSTON, September 5th.

You ask me what I am doing, dear Hal. I am driving fifteen miles in an open britzska, in a bitter blowing day, to return morning calls of neighbors, whose laudable desire is to "keep the county lively," and who have dragged my little hostess into active participation in a picnic at Abbotsford, which is to take place next Friday, the weather promising to reward the seekers after "liveliness" with their death of cold, if they escape their death of dulness.

I have taken several charming rides; the country is beautiful. I have caught a tolerably good cold—I mean, good of its kind—by wading knee deep in the Leader, and then standing on cold rocks, fishing by the hour; in which process I did catch—cold, but nothing else; for, though the water is still drowning deep in some beautiful brown pools, set in the rocks like huge cairngorms, it is, for the most part, so shallow, and everywhere so clear with the long-continued drought, that the spotted trout and silver eels see me quite as well as I see them, and behave accordingly, avoiding me more successfully, but quite as zealously, as I seek them....

Our party has hitherto consisted of Emily de Viry, an uncle and brother of Mrs. Mitchell's, and a London banker, a friend of hers. This, with the "liveliness" of the neighborhood, with whom we have dined, and who have dined with us, has been our society.

Next week Lady M——, who has been on a visit at Dunse Castle, returns, and various people are coming from sundry places; but, except the Comte de Revel, I do not know any of those who are expected.

The only music I have is my own, forbye a comic song or two, gasped and death-rattled out by poor old Sir Adam Fergusson, whom I met seventeen years ago at Walter Scott's house, and who is still tottering on, with inexhaustible spirits, but a body that seems quite threadbare, tattered, and ready to fall in pieces with long and hard use.

I do not read to the party collectively, but occasionally to Emily de Viry alone, who has asked me once or twice to read her favorite poems of hers, of Wordsworth's, Tennyson's, and Milnes's....

I act in Glasgow on Monday, to-morrow week. On Sunday I shall be in Edinburgh, and shall go and see Cecilia and Mr. Combe. I am sorry you didn't see Mrs. Mitchell, for, though forty years old, she might be fallen in love with any day for her good looks only. She is my notion of what Mary Stuart must have looked like, but she is a marvellous wise and discreet body—mentally and morally, I should think, very unlike the bonnie Queen of Scots.

Did I tell you that one place where we dined was Cowdenknowes? and I felt like singing "The Bonnie Broom" all the time, which would have been an awful accompaniment to the gastronomic enjoyments of the "liveliness of the county." Good-bye, my dear.

Ever yours, FANNY.

GLASGOW, Wednesday, September 15th.

I do not know what my friend's religious opinions are. She was brought up in the midst of strict Presbyterians, but I suspect, from some things I have heard her say, that she is by no means an orthodox sample of that faith. But, you know, I am never curious about people's beliefs, nor anxious that my friends should think as I do upon any subject. The resemblance between Mrs. Mitchell's notions and mine was one that she was led to express quite accidentally on a matter on which few women would agree with me....

I have not heard from Adelaide for a long time—a month at least. The Comte de Revel, the Sardinian Ambassador, was at Carolside while I was there, and spoke of the condition of the whole of Italy as full of insecurity, and liable at any moment to sudden outbreaks of violent and momentous change.

I cannot think that Rome will be a desirable residence for foreigners this winter; but E—— is so indolent that, unless people are massacred in the streets, and, moreover, in the identical street in which he lives, I should much doubt his being willing to move, or thinking it at all necessary to do so. I saw the old Countess Grey and Lady G—— just before they left London about three weeks ago. They were intending to winter in Rome, and told me they were much dissuaded by their friends from doing so.

If you leave Ireland, as you say, on the 1st of October, I am afraid I shall not see you in London, for I expect to pass the whole of that month in Edinburgh; but I hope I shall find leisure to come to St. Leonard's, and see you and Dorothy while you are there.

My plans are at present a little unsettled. I think of going back to Carolside with Mrs. Mitchell and Lady M—— until next Monday, when I shall return to Edinburgh, and from thence proceed to act four nights at Dundee; after that I shall be stationary in Edinburgh for, I hope, at least three weeks. I think I shall not act there, but have some thoughts of giving readings.... Good-bye, my dear.

I am ever as ever yours, FANNY.

DUNDEE, Thursday, 2d. MY DEAR HAL,

Your letter directed to me to Greenock never reached me. I did not go there; and having left Glasgow without doing so, shall not visit that place at all now.

I arrived yesterday in Dundee, having left Edinburgh in the morning. I act here two nights, and two in Perth, and return to Edinburgh on Wednesday week to remain with Elizabeth Mair (youngest daughter of Mrs. Harry Siddons) till the last week in October. After that I go southward to visit B—— G—— at Hawick, and the Ellesmeres at Worsley.

Your letter about sleeping in Orchard Street, on your way through London, is so very undecided—I mean upon that particular point—that I shall write to Mrs. Mulliner (my housekeeper) to desire her to receive you, if you should apply for a lodging, so that you can do as you like—either go there or to Euston Square.

I am delighted at the prospect of my three weeks' stay in Edinburgh. Nothing could exceed the affectionate kindness with which Lizzie and her husband received me.

After all that I have seen at home and abroad, Edinburgh still seems to me the most beautiful city I ever saw, and all my associations with it (except those of my last stay there) are peaceful and happy, and carry me back to that year of my life spent with Mrs. Harry Siddons, which has been the happiest of my existence hitherto.... Elizabeth's children are like a troop of angels, one prettier than another; I never saw more lovely little creatures. The companionship of children is charming to me. I delight in them, and am happy to think that I shall live among Lizzie's angels for three weeks. I was living with children at Carolside. Emily de Viry had her little boy and girl with her, the latter a little blossom of only a year old, born, poor thing! after her father's death. Mrs. Mitchell's eldest son was at home from Eton for the holidays, a very fine lad of sixteen, devoted to his mother, who seems to me only to exist through and for him and his brother.... I am to act while I am in Edinburgh, which, of course, is a good thing for me.

E—— has written to Henry Greville to take the house in Eaton Place which they looked at together when he was in London, so I feel sure they will be home in the spring. Adelaide has written a letter to Henry Greville, which he has sent on to me, assuring him of that fact.... She is enchanted at the idea of coming home. Good-bye, my dear. I will write this minute to Mrs. Mulliner to put you in my room, if you go to Orchard Street.

Ever yours, FANNY.

PERTH, Monday, September 27th. MY DEAR HAL,

I do not understand your note of the 15th, which has only just reached me here on the 27th. You ask me if I "have not written to Lizzie Mair to ascertain her whereabouts." Lizzie is in Edinburgh. I spent the Monday and Tuesday of last week with her, and return there the day after to-morrow, after acting two nights in this lovely place, whither I came on from Dundee yesterday. I shall remain three weeks with Lizzie, and shall see Cecilia and Mr. Combe during some part of that time; for, though they did not return to Edinburgh, as I supposed they would on Dr. Combe's death, they are expected home daily now, and will certainly be there in the first days of October. I wrote from Dundee to Mulliner to make up my bed and do everything in the world for you that you required; and I wrote to you from Dundee, telling you that I had done so. I have now again this minute written to the worthy woman, reiterating my orders to that effect; so sincerely hope you will be properly attended to in my house. Jeffreys, I am sorry to say (sorry for my sake, glad for his), has found an opportunity of placing himself permanently with a gentleman with whom he lived formerly, and has written to tell me of this; so that you will not have his services while you are in Orchard Street. He was an excellent, quiet, orderly servant, and I am sorry I shall not have the advantage of his service during the remainder of my time here.

I am engaged to act with Mr. Murray in Edinburgh for ten nights, from the 16th to the 25th of October. Before that I shall return for three nights to Glasgow, where my last three nights were very profitable, and the manager wishes to have me again. This will probably be next week, the 5th, 6th, and 7th of October. Perhaps I may go for a night or two to Greenock from Glasgow before I return to Edinburgh, but this is uncertain.

From the 12th to the 15th I am going with Mrs. Mitchell, who will take me up in Edinburgh to visit the H—— D——s at Ardoch, and after that shall be stationary for ten days.

PERTH, Tuesday, 28th.

In spite of my innate English horror of untidiness, and my maid's innate Irish tendency to it, I should be very sorry if she were to leave me. She has lived with me many years, and I really love as well as esteem her. She has been more than a servant—she has been a friend to me; and I cried some tears at Carolside at the thought of parting with her....

I will tell you another point of agreement between Mrs. Mitchell and myself, which I also discovered accidentally. Emily de Viry was laughing at her for a peculiar mode of dress she has adopted, always wearing a cap upon her pretty head, and never uncovering her arms and neck, though both are beautiful, in evening dress. I was appealed to for my opinion about the costume of middle-aged gentlewomen, and could, of course, only state that it had been my own determination for some years past never to uncover either my arms or neck, or wear any but sober colors as soon as I was forty years old. This is one of those trivial points of agreement which sometimes indicate more resemblance between people's natures than a similarity of opinions on important matters, which may co exist with considerable difference in matters of taste and feeling. Mrs. Mitchell, like myself, does not think that stark nakedness would be indecent among decent savage people, but does object to full-dress semi-nudity among indecent civilized ones.

Lady M—— did not come with me to Dundee. I would not let her, though her proposal to do so was certainly dictated partly by her affection for me.... But I would not let her come with me strolling, though I should only have been too glad of her company. She paints beautifully.... Alas! an empty heart is a spur and goad to drive one to the world's end, unless the soul be full of God, and the mind and time of wholesome occupation.

The Mairs are excellently kind to me, and I look forward to my stay with them with great pleasure. Cecilia and Mr. Combe are expected daily in Edinburgh, so I shall lose little or nothing of them.

I am just disappointed of a charming opportunity of seeing the lovely country round Perth. Lady Ruthven has sent me a very pressing invitation to spend some days at Freeland, seven miles from here; but I am obliged to return to Edinburgh to-morrow, for which I am very sorry, as I should have liked to go to Freeland, the whole neighborhood of which is beautiful. Good-bye. God bless you.

Ever yours, FANNY.

29, ABERCROMBIE PLACE, EDINBURGH, Saturday, October 2d. DEAR HAL,

I received a note from Mrs. Mulliner yesterday morning, expressing her readiness to receive you, and her full intention to devote herself to you to the very utmost of her ability. I am sorry Jeffreys will not be there to help you in getting cabs, etc.; but he has found a chance of placing himself permanently with a former master, and, of course, is glad of the opportunity to do so.

I have not yet seen any of the Coxes. Cecilia and Mr. Combe only arrived last night from Hull, having come by Antwerp. They have both got the influenza, and are very much knocked up, and I have seen neither of them yet....

The railroad running through the Castle Gardens has cruelly spoiled them, of course, though from the depth of the ravine, at the bottom of which it lies, it is not seen from Prince's Street; but its silver wake floats up above the highest trees of the banks, and the Gardens themselves are ruined by it. I have a sadly affectionate feeling for every inch of that ground.... I do not admire Scott's monument very much. It is an exact copy in stone of the Episcopal Throne in Exeter Cathedral, a beautiful piece of wood carving. The difference between the white color of the statue and the gray shrine by which it is canopied is not agreeable to me. I should have liked it better if the figure had been of the same stone as the monument, and so of the same color.

In Edinburgh it is never so much the detail of its various parts that arrests my attention and enchants me especially, as the picturesque and grand effect of its several parts in juxtaposition with each other—the beautiful result of all its features together, the striking and romantic whole. The Carlton Hill seems to me more covered with buildings than I thought it was; but I believe you have seen it since I have, so that I do not know how to answer your question about it.

In determining to act in Edinburgh I followed the advice of the Mairs, who were, of course, more likely to be able to judge of the probable relative success of reading or acting here, and who counselled the latter.... Good-bye, dear.

Ever yours, FANNY.

[My cousin Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Mrs. Harry Siddons, married Major Mair, son of that fine old officer, Colonel Mair, Governor of Fort George. During several protracted seasons of foreign service, one of the banishments to which his military duty condemned Arthur Mair was a remote and lonely outpost on the furthest border of our then hardly peopled Canadian territory—a literal wilderness, without human inhabitants. Here, alone, with the small body of men under his command, he led a life of absolute mental and intellectual solitude, the effect of which upon his nervous system was such that, on his return to civilized existence, the society of his fellow-creatures, and all the intercourse of busy city life, affected him with such extreme shyness and embarrassment that in his own native town of Edinburgh, for some time after his return to it, he used to avoid all the more frequented thoroughfares, from mere nervous dread of encountering and being spoken to by persons of his acquaintance—an unfavorable result of "solitary confinement," even in a cell as wide as a wilderness.]

STAR HOTEL, GLASGOW, GEORGE SQUARE, October 4th. DEAR HARRIET,

My acquaintance with the H—— D——s dates only from my last visit to Glasgow, when they joined our party at this hotel, and returned to Carolside with us. The lady is a daughter of a family who are intimate friends of T—— M——, and was presented to me when a girl in London some years ago. She has since married, and I met her again, with her husband, here a little while ago.... They both show a very kind desire to be civil and amiable to me, and I like them both, and her especially. They have spent the last five years of their lives wandering together about Europe and Asia. They have no children, and have travelled without any of the servants that generally attend wealthy English people abroad (courier, lady's-maid, valet); and have come home so in love with their wild untrammelled life, that the possession of their estate at Ardoch, and their prospect of an income of many thousands a year, seem equally to oppress them as undesirable incumbrances, requiring them to sacrifice all their freedom, and submit to all sorts of civilized conventional constraints from which they have lived in blessed exemption abroad, and to adopt a style of existence utterly repugnant to their nomadic no-habits. G—— D——, on their return to Ardoch, proposed to his wife to take up their abode in two of the rooms of their fine large house, and let the rest to some pleasant and amusing people; for, he said, they never could think of living in that house by themselves....

Your distress about my readings I answered with a slight feeling that it was a pity you should begin to be anxious and troubled about the details of a project that may possibly never be carried out after any fashion. I paid heed, nevertheless, to your observations, of which I admit the force, and am so far from having determined to abide by any theoretical convictions of my own upon the subject that I shall be guided entirely by Mr. Mitchell's opinion about the best manner of giving my readings; for, as I do it for money, I shall do it in the way most likely to be profitable. At the same time, I shall certainly use my best endeavor to have the business so arranged as to desecrate as little as possible the great works of the master, in the exposition and illustration of which I look for infinite pleasure and profit of the highest order, whatever my meaner gain by it may be....

[I am afraid my excellent and zealous manager, Mr. Mitchell, was often far from satisfied with the views I took of the duty imposed upon me by reading Shakespeare. My entire unwillingness to exhaust myself and make my work laborious instead of pleasant to me, by reading more than three, or at the utmost four, times a week, when very often we could have commanded very full rooms for the six; my pertinacious determination to read as many of the plays (and I read twenty-five) as could be so given to an audience in regular rotation, so as to avoid becoming hackneyed, in my feeling or delivery of them, appeared to him vexatious particularities highly inimical to my own best interests, which he thought would have been better served by reading "Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," and the "Merchant of Venice," three times as often as I did, and "Richard II.," "Measure for Measure," and one or two others, three times as seldom, or not at all. But though Mr. Mitchell could calculate the money value of my readings to me, their inestimable value he knew nothing of.]

Pray now, my dearest friend, consider that you too often challenge with affectionate anxiety for me that future which I may never live to see; and yet do not imagine that I consider your apprehensions and suggestions, were they a thousand times more numerous and more ridiculous, if that were possible, as in any way unsatisfactory; but highly the contrary, as testifying to that most comfortable fact that you, my beloved Hal, are the very same you ever have been to me, an excellent, precious, devoted, wise, most absurd, and every way invaluable friend. God bless you.

Ever yours, FANNY.

GREENOCK, October 9th.

I am very glad I did the duty of a hostess, dear Hal, though only in your dreams, and received you hospitably in my own house, though I was not conscious of it. As for that fool Mulliner and that brute Jeffreys, I will hang them up together on one rope when I return, for allowing you to be so horribly disturbed....

If we are in Orchard Street together again, you shall put the Psyche [a fine cast of the Neapolitan truncated statue given to Mr. Hamilton, Mrs. Fitzhugh's brother, by the King of Naples] in whatever light you please; but, as I am certain not to return to London till the third week in November, if then, I feel as if, when I get back to Orchard Street, I should have nothing to do but pack up my things preparatory to removing to King Street, where I hope to get Mrs. Humphreys to receive me until I leave England.

I shall certainly not be six weeks in Orchard Street when I return, and the Psyche will desert the drawing-room when I do, and resume her post on the staircase, where she always seemed to me to look down on dear Mrs. Fitzhugh's morning visitors, as they came up the stairs, with a divinely mild severity of expression, as if she felt the bore about to be inflicted by their presence on the inmates of her house, the mortals under her heavenly care.

You ought to find two letters from me at Bannisters, for I have directed two to you there. How I wish I could be with you and dear Emily! Give my love to her, and believe me

Ever yours, FANNY.

[I was at this time occupying my friend Mrs. Fitzhugh's house in Orchard Street, Portman Square, which I rented for a twelvemonth from her. It was a convenient small house in an excellent situation, and one whole side of the drawing-room was covered with a clever painting, by Mr. Fitzhugh, of the bay and city of Naples—a pleasant object of contemplation in London winter days.]

GLASGOW, October 12th. MY DEAREST HAL,

I should very much wish that you would give me one of Loyal's children [a fine Irish retriever of my friend's]; but do not again end any letter to me so abruptly, without even signing your name, because it gives me a most uncomfortable notion that I have not got all you have written, that you have, by mistake, put only a part of your letter in your envelope, and so sent it off unfinished to me.

I left Carolside, to my great regret, yesterday. I came in Mrs. Mitchell's carriage to within fourteen miles of Edinburgh, where I joined the railroad. She accompanied me thus far, and then returned home. At Edinburgh I transferred myself immediately to the Glasgow train, and so came on, without being able to ascertain whether Cecilia Combe and Lizzie Mair are at home or not.

Mrs. Mitchell and Lady M——, and a party of their friends, are coming to Glasgow to-morrow. They will stay at the same inn where I am, and go to the theatre every night that I play, so that I do not feel yet as if I had taken leave of them; and Lady M—— intends going on with me to Dundee, where I am going to act when I have finished my engagement here and at Greenock.

Is it not too provoking that the York manager has at length found out that he can afford to give me my terms, and now writes to me to beg that I will go and act in York at the beginning of next month? which, of course, I cannot, as I am to be three weeks in Edinburgh before I return to England.