I spent Thursday evening with Mrs. Jameson; she had a whole heap of people at her house, and among them the American minister and his niece—Philadelphians....

I do not pity Mrs. Jameson very much in her relations with Lady Byron. I never thought theirs a real attachment, but a connection made up of all sorts of motives, which was sure not to hold water long, and never to hold it after it had once begun to leak. It was an instance of one of those relationships which are made to wear out, and as it always appeared so to me, I have no great sympathy with either party in this foreseen result.

I pity Mrs. Jameson more because she is mortified than because she is grieved, and I pity Lady Byron because she is more afraid of mortifying than of giving her pain. It is all very uncomfortable; but real sorrow has as little to do with it now as real love ever had.... I am writing to you at Mr. Scott's, where I arrived yesterday afternoon, the beginning of my letter having been written in London, the middle at Bradford, and the end here.

It is Sunday afternoon: our morning service is over. I am sorry to say I find both Mr. and Mrs. Scott quite unwell, the former with one of those constitutional headaches from which he has suffered so much for many years. They incapacitate him for conversation or any mental exertion, and I am a great loser by it, as well as grieved for his illness.... Farewell.

Ever as ever yours, FANNY.

[Lucy Austin, the clever and handsome daughter of a cleverer and handsomer mother—Mrs. John Austin, wife of the eminent lawyer and writer—excited a great deal of admiration, as the wife of Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, in the London society of my day. Loss of health compelled her to pass the last years of her life in the East; and the letters she wrote during her sojourn there are not only full of charm and interest, but bear witness to a widespread personal influence over the native population among whom she lived, the result of her humane benevolence towards, and kindly sympathy for, them.

One or two amusing incidents occurred with regard to my reading of the "Midsummer Night's Dream" at Manchester. The gentleman who had the management of the performance wrote to me offering me forty pounds for my share of it—a very liberal price, which I declined, my price for one of my readings being invariably twenty pounds. At the end of the performance one of the gentlemen of the committee came to pay me my salary, which having done, he expressed himself, in his own behalf and that of his fellow-managers, greatly obliged to me for the liberality I had exhibited (honesty, it seems to me) in not accepting double my usual terms when they offered it to me. "And," said he, drawing a five-pound note from his pocket-book, "I really—we really—if you would—if you could—allow us to offer you five pounds in addition——" The gentleman's voice died away, and he seemed to be becoming nervous, under the effect of the steadfast seriousness with which, in spite of the greatest inclination to burst out laughing, I listened to this strange proposal. The five-pound note fluttered a little between his finger and thumb, and for one moment I had a diabolical temptation to twitch it from him and throw it into the fire. This prompting of Satan, however, I womanfully resisted, and merely civilly declined the gratuity; and the gentleman left me with profuse acknowledgments of the service I had rendered them and my "extreme liberality."

My friend Charles Halle, coming in just at this moment, was thrown into fits of laughter at the transaction, and my astonishment at it.

Halle was a friend of ours, an admirable musician, and a most amiable man, and one of the best masters of our modern day. His style was more remarkable for sensibility, delicacy, and refinement, than for power or brilliancy of execution; but I preferred his rendering of Beethoven to that of all the other virtuosi I ever heard; and some of the hours of greatest musical enjoyment I have had in my life I owe to him, when he and his friend Joachim, playing almost, as it seemed, as much for their own delight as ours, enchanted a small circle of enthusiastic and grateful listeners, gathered round them in my sister's drawing-room.

Mr. Scott's comment upon my reading gave me great pleasure. "It was good," he said, "from beginning to end; but you are Theseus." Oddly enough, a similar compliment was paid me in the same words at the end of a reading that I gave for the Working Men's Institute in Brighton, when my friend, Mr. R——, kindly complimenting me on the performance, said, "It was all delightful: but you are Henry V.," and whatever difference of opinion may have existed among my critics as to my rendering the tragic and comic characters of Shakespeare's plays, I think the heroic ones were those in which I ought to have succeeded best, for they were undoubtedly those with which I had most sympathy.]

FULFORD, YORK, Saturday, 3d. MY DEAREST HAL,

I am amused at your gasping anxiety to be told where I am going, as if I was about to depart into some non-postal region, where letter of yours should never reach me more, instead of spending the next week in Edinburgh, which surely you did know.... My dearest Hal, J—— W—— has just come into my room, bringing the news of the Emperor of Russia's death. It has seized me quite hysterically, and the idea of the possible immediate cessation of carnage and desolation, and war and wickedness (in that peculiar shape), has shaken me inexpressibly, and I am shocked at the tears of joy that are raining from my eyes, so that I can't see the paper on which I am writing to you; and if I can thus weep my thanksgivings for the news of this man's death, who have no dear son, or brother, or husband on that murderous Crimean soil, think of the shout of rejoicing which will be his only dirge throughout France and England. I am shocked at the exclamation of gratitude which escaped my lips when I heard the announcement. Poor human soul, how terrible that its sudden summons from its heavy and difficult responsibilities should thus be hailed by any other human creature! and yet how many will draw a long breath, as of a great deliverance, at this news!

I can hardly write at all, my hand shakes so, and I cannot think of anything else; and yet I had purposed to send dear Dorothy some account of her family here, who are all well and most kind to me. I will wait a while....

DEAREST DOROTHY,

I sit here in this pleasant room [I was in Miss Wilson's home], the prospect from which is improved by the rising of the river, which presents the appearance of a lake. The snowdrops hang their white clusters above the brown mould of the garden beds, and watery rays of sunshine slant shyly across the meadows: the whole is very sweet and peaceful, and I was enjoying it extremely, when the report of this imperial death broke like a peal of thunder over it all, as unexpectedly as terribly.

To-morrow I am to go and hear afternoon service at the minster, which I have never seen. Everything is done for my pleasure and satisfaction that can be thought of, and I feel very grateful for it. The thought of the old love and friendship between my dead kindred and the former owners of this house makes the place pleasant with a saddish pleasantness to me.

Dear Dorothy, I wish you were here; I write you a very affectionate kiss, and am

Yours, FANNY.

GEORGE HOTEL, BANGOR, Monday, 20th. MY DEAREST HAL,

If you had given way to your impulse of accompanying us to Wales, I do not think you could have returned under three days, or that even by that time you could in any degree have recovered from the effect of our to-day's passage. Every creature on board was sick except M—— and myself....

"A quelque chose malheur est bon," and the indisposition I was suffering all yesterday preserved me from the lesser evil of sea-sickness. This was my experience the last time I crossed the Atlantic, when my voyage was preceded by a week of serious illness, and during the whole passage I did not suffer from sea-sickness....

On our arrival here, we found that the excellent Miss Roberts [mistress of the charming hotel at Bangor] had treated us exactly as the last time; i.e., "A party were just finishing dinner in our sitting-room. She was very sorry, very sorry indeed; but it would be ready for us in less than a quarter of an hour;" and we were thrust provisionally into another, where letters, books, workboxes, india-rubber shoes, and smoking-caps attested that we had no business, and suggested that their owners were in all probability the "party" finishing off their dinner in our bespoken apartment, which gave me an inclination to toss all the things in the room about, and poke the smoking-caps into the india-rubber shoes; but I didn't. What innumerable temptations I do resist! I assured Miss Roberts I was very ill-tempered, and proceeded to make assurance doubly sure by blowing her up sky-high, to which she merely replied with a Welsh "Eh! come si ha da far?" and declared that if I was in her place I should do just the same, which excited my wrath to a pitch of fury.

We had some lunch, and then set off to the quarries. The afternoon was bright and beautiful, and we were charmed with the drive and all we saw, M—— never ceasing to exclaim with fervent satisfaction at the comfortable, cheerful, healthy, well-to-do appearance of the people and their habitations—a most striking and suggestive contrast to all we had seen in poor Ireland, certainly....

We have just done dinner, and M—— is fast asleep on the sofa, with "Pilgrim's Progress" in her arms. My head aches, and my nerves twitch with fatigue and pain, but I am better than I was yesterday.

The trains from this place are very inconvenient. The one we have to go by starts from here at nine, and does not reach London till half-past seven in the evening, so we shall have a wearisome day of it....

Give my kindest love to dear Mrs. Taylor and "the girls." I shall think of them with infinite anxiety, and pray, "whenever I remember to be holy," that this dreadful war may now soon come to a close, and they be spared further anguish. [Colonel Richard Taylor, Miss S——'s nephew, was with the army in the Crimea.]

I am ever most affectionately yours, FANNY.

BATH, Monday, December 9th. MY DEAREST HAL,

... You cannot think how forlorn I feel, walking in and out of our room here without farewell or greeting from you; and yet the place where you have been with me has a remembered presence of your affectionate companionship that makes it pleasant, compared to those where I go for the first time and have no such friendly association to cheer me. My disposition, as you know, is averse to all strangeness, and takes little delight in novelty; and the wandering life I lead compels me to both, forbidding all custom and the comfortable feeling of habit and use, which make me loath to leave a place where I have stayed only three days, for another where I have never stayed at all.

I was not very happy at Oxford. The beautiful place impressed me sadly; but that was because I was very unwell and sad while I was there. The weather was horrible; a dark greasy fog pervaded the sky the whole time. The roads were so muddy as to render riding odious, and the streets so slimy that walking was really dangerous as well as disagreeable. Still, I saw some things with which I was much charmed, and have no doubt that, if I could but have had an hour's daylight, I should have been delighted with the place altogether.

E—— S—— came down from London on Thursday morning, and took me to see the fine collection of drawings by Raphael and Michael Angelo at the Taylor Institute, and I spent three hours there in a state of great enjoyment. I wandered in ignorant wonderment through the Bodleian Library and the Ashmolean Museum, with A—— M——, who seemed quite as little familiar with the learned treasures of the place as myself. He took me to see his own college, Christ Church, with which, especially the great dining-hall, I was enchanted; and with the fine avenue at the back of the colleges, and the tower and cloisters of Magdalen.

I have no doubt I should enjoy another visit to Oxford very much; but I was miserable while I was there, and could not do justice to the beauty of the place. The inn where I stayed was dirty and uncomfortable, and dearer than any I have yet stayed at. My sitting-room was dingy and dark, and I was glad when I came into this large light sitting-room of ours again, out of which, however, they have removed the piano—a loss I have not thought it worth while to replace, as I go to Cheltenham on Wednesday afternoon.... You ask what I would sell my "English Tragedy" for. Why, anything anybody would give me for it. It cannot be acted, and nobody reads plays nowadays—small blame to them....

Ever as ever yours, FANNY.

CHELTENHAM, Thursday, 12th. MY DEAREST HAL,

I found your loving greeting on my arrival here yesterday evening. I am troubled at your account of yourself.... What things these bodies of ours are! I sometimes think that, when we lay them down in the earth, we shall have taken leave of all our sinfulness; and yet there are sins of the soul that do not lodge in the flesh, though the greater proportion of our sins, I think, do: and when I reflect how little control we have over our physical circumstances, what with inherited disease and infirmity, and infirmity and disease incurred through the ignorant misguidance of others during our youth, and our own ignorant misdirection afterwards, I think the miseries we reap are punishment enough for much consequent sin; and that, once freed from the "body of this death," we shall cease to be subject to sin in anything like the same degree.... It is very muddy underfoot; but if the sky does not fall, I shall ride out on my old post-horse at twelve o'clock.

Certainly your question, as to where the wise men are who are to encounter the difficulties of legislation for this country next spring, was an exclamation—a shriek—and not an interrogation, addressed to me at any rate; for though I suppose God's quiver is never empty of arrows, and that some are always found to do His work, it may be that saving this country from a gradual decline of greatness and decay of prosperity may not be work for which He has appointed hands, and which therefore will not be done....

I declined being in the room we formerly occupied in this house, because I feared, now the days are so much shorter, that it would be inconveniently dark. I am in a charming light room, with three windows down to the ground, and a bewitching paper of pale green, with slender gold rods running up it, all wound round with various colored convolvuli. It's one of the prettiest papers I ever saw, and makes me very happy. You know how subject I am even to such an influence as that of a ridiculous wall-paper....

I have had no conversation with Mr. Churchill; but, in spite of my requesting him not to be at the trouble of moving the piano into my present sitting-room, as I am here for so short a time, I find it installed here this morning. He certainly is the black swan of hotel-keepers; and how kind and indulgent people are to me everywhere!... My young devotee, Miss A——, acquiesced very cordially in all my physical prescriptions for mental health, and did not seem to take at all amiss my plunging her hysterical enthusiasm first into perspirations, and then into cold baths.

Her maid has been with me this morning, with lovely fresh flowers—a bunch of delicious Persian lilac, and two flower-pots full of various mosses, smelling so fragrantly of mere earthy freshness that no perfume ever surpassed it.

The only other greeting she sent me was some pretty lines of Victor Hugo's, with which I was unacquainted, and which I send you, not for their singular inappropriateness as applied to me, but for their graceful turn:

"Tu es comme l'oiseau pose pour un instant Sur des rameaux trop freles, Que sent ployer la branche, et qui chante pourtant Sachant qu'il a des ailes;"

which I translate impromptu thus:

Thou art like the bird that alights, and sings Though the frail spray bends, for he knows he has wings.

God bless you, my dear. Love to dear Dorothy.

Ever as ever yours, FANNY.

WORCESTER, Tuesday, 17th. MY DEAREST HAL,

Those pretty French lines I sent you are by Victor Hugo, a man of great genius, but almost the most exaggerated writer of the exaggerated modern school of French style. Some of his poems, in spite of this, are fine and charming; and, indeed, there is not much better French to be found than the prose of some of the French writers of novels and essays. Madame George Sand, Merimee, Ste. Beuve, write with admirable simplicity and force.

I sent my young adorer back, in return for her quatrain, Millevoye's lines on the withered leaf—a far more appropriate image of my peregrinations. These, no doubt, you know, ending with four pretty lines—

"Je vais ou va toute chose, Sans me plaindre, ou m'inquieter Ou va la feuille de rose, Et la feuille de laurier."

... You ask after my audiences. At Bath the same singular-looking gentleman, who is beautiful as well as singular looking, and wonderfully like my uncle John, came and sat at my last morning reading in the same conspicuous place. He is a helpless invalid, and was wheeled in his chair through my private room, to the place which he occupied near my reading-stage. His name is C——, and he and his wife were intimate friends of John Kemble's, and sent to beg I would see them after the reading. As I had to start immediately for Cheltenham, this was impossible, which I was very sorry for, as I should like to have spoken to that beautiful face.

You impress upon me the value of the blessing of health, and I think I estimate it duly; for although I said it mattered little how I was, I meant that, isolated as I am, my ill health would affect and afflict fewer persons than that of some one who had bonds and ties of one sort and another.... My work goes on without interruption, and I think with little variation in my mode of performing it; and I make efforts of this kind, sometimes under such circumstances of physical suffering and weakness, that I am almost hard-heartedly incredulous about the difficulty of doing anything that one has to do—which is not very reasonable either, for the force of will, the nervous energy, which carries one through such efforts, depends itself on physical conditions, which vary in different temperaments, and in the same temperament at different times.

The first day of my arrival in Cheltenham I received a note from Miss A——'s mother—a very touching expression of thanks for what she calls my kindness to her child, full of anxiety about the training and guiding of her mind and character, accepting with much gratitude my offer of personal acquaintance with her daughter (personal acquaintance is an excellent antidote to enthusiasms), whom she brought herself the next day to see me.... In our conversation I insisted much on the importance of physical training, and commended to her, after the highest of all help (without which, indeed, none other can avail), systematic and regular exercise, and systematic and sedulous occupation, both followed as a positive duty; all possible sedatives for the mind and imagination; and the utmost attention and care to all the physical functions. I gave her the wisdom which I have bought; but she will buy her own, or I am much mistaken.... I went on Sunday to the cathedral to hear afternoon service, but was late, and did not get within the choir, but sat on a chair in a lonely corner of the transept, and followed the service from without the pale. Yesterday, at my usual hour for exercise, I went to walk by the river; but rain came on, and I finished my walk under the cloisters, which rang from end to end with the shrill shouts of a parcel of school-boys, let out for their noon-day recess. Last night the weather was fearful, a perfect storm of wind and rain, so that, though my audience was small, I was agreeably surprised to find I had any at all.

I have not seen the letter you refer to in the Times, but think it very likely Charles Greville should write such a one, as I heard him say he should give the public a piece of his mind on the subject, and he occasionally does write in the Times, and his views are precisely what you describe those of "Carolus" to be.

Good-bye, dear. I have a bundle of violets from you this morning, for which many thanks. Love to dear Dorothy.

Ever as ever yours, FANNY.

18, ORCHARD STREET, December 7th.

I have no patience with letters at all, my dear Hal. I am conscious half the time I write that I don't say clearly what I mean, and when I get your answers, I have that disagreeable conviction confirmed. Perhaps it is just as well, however; for the sort of feverish impatience I have very often while writing, because of the insufficiency of the process to express, as rapidly and distinctly as I wish, my thoughts, is so excessive, as to be childish. I am content, henceforth, to answer you to the best of my circumstances (for it is not to the best of my ability, really) on any subject you please. It is enough that my words are of use to you, and God knows it signifies nothing at all that I cannot conceive how they should be so. You have misunderstood me, or I misexpressed myself, with regard to the ground of my objecting to write upon the subjects we have lately discussed in our letters. I do not think it irreverent to advert to the highest subjects at any time. That which is most profoundly serious to me, is always very near my thoughts—so much so that it mingles constantly with them and my words in a manner rather startling and shocking, I think, to people whose minds are parcelled out into distinct and detached divisions—pigeon-holes, as it were—for the sacred and profane, and whose seriousness never comes near their mirth. This is not at all the case with me, with whom they are apt to run into each other very frequently; seriousness is perhaps more habitual to my mind than folly, but my laughter and jests are not very remotely allied to my deepest convictions.

My instincts of vital truth being a very essential part of me, must go with me to the playhouse, rehearsals, and performances, and all the intermediate time of various occupations, so that it is not my "veneration" which is shocked at the superficial mode in which I have handled these themes, while writing of them to you, but my "conscientiousness," which suggests the whole time that such matters should not be spoken of without sufficient previous process of reflection, and that it is behaving irreverently to anything that requires consideration to talk of it crudely without any. If the sincerest and most strenuous mental application can hardly enable us to arrive at glimpses of the truth upon those subjects, there is an impertinent levity in uttering mere notions about them which have been submitted to no such test. You do think, and though you come to no conclusions, are perfectly entitled to utter your non-conclusiveness; but I have a cowardly dread of the labor of thinking steadily and consecutively upon these difficult subjects, and I have certainly not at present the proper leisure or opportunities for doing so, and therefore but for your last letter I should say it was a shame to speak upon them. But since the vague suggestions which arise in my mind upon these only important matters comfort and are of any use to you, then, my beloved friend, they have a value and virtue, and I shall no longer feel reluctant to utter them.

I have written this last page since my return from Covent Garden Theatre, where I have been enacting the dying scene of Queen Katharine, and doing what I am as sorry for as I can be for anything of that kind.

At the conclusion of my performance the audience called for me, but I was seized with a perfect nervous terror at the idea of going on, and left the house as quickly as possible.

All the other actors will be called for, and will go on, and I shall incur unpleasant comments and probably have very untrue motives attributed to me for having, as it must appear, ungraciously withdrawn myself from the public call. This does not trouble me very deeply, but I am sorry for it because I am afraid it will be misinterpreted and noticed, and considered disrespectful, which it was not....

Give my dear love to Dorothy. I hope to be with you on the 3d of January.

I am ever as ever yours, FANNY.

18, ORCHARD STREET, Tuesday, 8th.

Now I must lump my answer to you, my dearest Hal—a thing that I hate doing; but here are three unanswered letters of yours on my table, and I shall never get through the payment of them if one letter may not do for the three, for every day brings fresh claims of this sort, and I feel a kind of smothering sensation as they accumulate round me, such as might attend one's gradually sinking into a well: what though Truth were at the bottom—if one was drowned before one got to her?...

Send the pamphlet on "Bread" to Lenox, and write to Elizabeth Sedgwick about it—that is pure humanity, and I see you do not think I shall copy the recipe and measurements correctly. (It's pouring with rain, and thundering as loud as it knows how in England)....

My spirits are fair enough, though the first evening I spent alone here, after I came back, tried them a little, and I had a cowardly impulse to rush in next door [my friends the Miss Hamiltons, Mrs. Fitzhugh's sisters, were my neighbors] to be with some friendly human beings; but I reflected that this would never do—those who are alone must learn to be lonely.... This was the only black hour I have had since my return to London....

I have finished the first volume of Grote's "History of Greece." O ye gods, ye beautiful gods of Greece, that ever ye should have lived to become such immortal bores through the meritorious labors of an eminent English historian! Thank Heaven, I have done with what has hitherto been always the most attractive part of history to me—its legendary and poetical prologue (I hate the history of my dear native land the moment the Commons begin to vote subsidies), and I do not think I ever before rejoiced in passing from tradition to matter-of-fact in an historical work. I have no doubt, now we have come down from Olympus, I shall enjoy Mr. Grote's great work much more.

I have read through Morier's "Hadji Baba in England," while eating my dinner, in order not to eat too fast, a precaution I learned years ago while eating my lonely dinners at Butler Place day after day. (Of course Grote was too heavy as sauce for eating.) At other seasons I have read through another number of the Dublin Magazine, and during my hair-combings continue to enchant myself with "Wilhelm Meister." I am reading the "Wanderjahr," having finished the "Lehrjahr." I never read the former in German before; it is altogether a wonderful book. I practise before breakfast, and I have drawn for two hours every day lately. I have received and returned visits, and when my daily exercise takes its place again among my occupations, my time will be full, and I hope to bless God for my days, even now.... This answers you as to my spirits....

I had a letter from E—— yesterday, desiring me to forward my book to them, and talking of still remaining where they are, as long as the heat is endurable and the children continue well.

I had a note from Lady Duff Gordon yesterday, who is just returned from Rome, where she saw my sister frequently and intimately; and she seems to think Adelaide very tolerably resigned to remain where she is, especially as she has found a cupboard in her palazzo, which has so delighted her that she is content to abide where such things are rare and she has one, rather than return home where they are common and she might have many. In the mean time, seats in the next Parliament are, it seems, to go begging, and Charles Greville has written to E—— again to come over and stand.... I disapprove of this incessant urging E—— to return, especially as the Grevilles only want him to become a British legislator in order that she may open a pleasant house in London and amuse them....

You ask me what I shall do with regard to America. If I act there, I shall do so upon the plan I started with here; i.e., a nightly certainty, to be paid nightly: it is what the managers send to offer me, and is, without doubt, the safest, if not the most profitable plan....

I am diverted with your rage at Liston [the eminent surgeon under whose care I had been]. I must say, I wish he had been a little more attentive to me professionally....

My singing neighbors—I suppose lodgers for the season—have departed, or, at any rate, become silent; I hear them no more, and make all my own music, which I prefer, though sometimes of an evening, when I am not singing, the lonely silence round me is rather oppressive. But my evenings are short; I dine at seven, and go to bed at ten; and in spite of my endeavors to achieve a better frame of mind, I do look with positive joy at my bed, where, lying down, the day will not only be past, but forgotten.... It is difficult for me not to rejoice when each day ends....

Dear Hal, I dined with the Horace Wilsons, and in the evening my father came there. He said Miss Cottin, with whom he was to have dined, was ill, and had put him off; that he had only come up from Brighton the day before, and was going back to-morrow—to-day, i.e.; that he was not well, but that Brighton agreed with him, and that he should steam about from Brighton to Havre and Dieppe and Guernsey and Jersey, as that process suits him better than abiding on dry land....

ORCHARD STREET, Thursday, June 10th.

Of course, dear Harriet, I know that the officials of our public charities cannot be thrown into paroxysms of pity by every case of misery brought before them; they would soon cease to be relieving officers, and have to be relieved themselves. But "there is reason in roasting of eggs," whatever that may mean: our forefathers knew, and so did Touchstone, for he talks of "an ill-roasted egg, done all o' one side." I assure you when I went to the workhouse to see after that wretched young girl who was taken up for sleeping in the park because she had nowhere else to sleep in, though I cried like a Magdalene, and talked like a magpie, I felt as if I was running my head against a stone wall all the time I appealed to the authorities to save her from utter ruin. The only impression I seemed to make upon them was that of surprise that any one should take to heart in such wise the case of some one not belonging to them. Perhaps the worthy overseer thought me her sister in another sense from that in which I am so, from the vehemence with which I urged upon him the imperative duty of snatching so young a creature from the doom to which she seemed inevitably delivered over. All their answers reminded me of Mephistopheles' reply to Faust's frantic pity for Gretchen, "She is not the first."

Now to answer your last question. I do not intend to cut the manager of the Princess's Theatre; but I do not intend either to make any application to him. If he offers me a reasonable weekly engagement, I will take it, and make him a curtsey; if he does not, I will do without it, and live as I best may on what I have already earned, and what I can earn in the provinces, till the spring....

C—— came up from Bath to London with me, and after talking politics, art, and literature, began upon religion, which, not being controversially disposed, I declined, commending him to the study of the newspaper, and, curling myself up in one of those charming long seats of the Great Western railroad coaches, went to sleep, and so accomplished the latter part of my journey, in spite of that dangerous proximity, an unconverted heterodox Protestant. Farewell, my dearest Hal.

I am ever as ever yours, FANNY.

18, ORCHARD STREET, December 10th. DEAREST HAL,

... I had a horrible day yesterday, from which I am not yet recovered this morning. It wound up by the shock of hearing of Liston's death. There was something in my last intercourse with him that made this unexpected intelligence very painful; and then his wonderful strength, his great, noble frame, that seemed to promise so long and vigorous a hold on life, made his sudden death very shocking. When I met him last in the park, he told me he was very ill, and had been spitting up a quart of blood after walking twenty-five miles, and that there was something all wrong with his throat; in spite of which, I was greatly shaken by the news of his death, which was occasioned by aneurism in the throat.

I am marking "Wilhelm Meister" for you; it is a book that interests me almost more than any other I could name; it is very painful, and I know nothing comparable to the conception and execution of Mignon. The whole book is so wise, so life-like, so true, and so merciless in its truth, that it is like life itself, endured by a stoic, an illustration of what existence would be to a thoughtful mind without faith in God—that faith which alone can bear us undespairing over the earth, where the mere doom of inevitable change would be enough to fill the human soul with amazement and anguish.

Goethe's books always make me lay a terrified and aching hold on my religious faith; they show me, even as life itself does, the need of steadfast belief in something better, if one would not lie down and die from the mere sense of what has been endured, what is endured, and what must be endured.

I forgot to tell you that I have had proposals again from the Norwich manager, and from Bath and Bristol; and yesterday the Princess's Theatre potentate called upon me; but upon my telling him that I should prefer transacting my arrangements with him in writing rather than viva voce, he took himself off....

God bless you, dear. Give my dear love to Dorothy.

Yours ever, FANNY.

18, ORCHARD STREET, December 11th, 1847. MY DEAR HAL,

I do not feel sure, from the tenor of your letter, that you do not wish to have my dog Hero boarded at Jenny Wade's; if you do, he shall go there. You are a far better judge than I am of the propriety of keeping a well-fed dog among your starving people. That they themselves would do so, I can believe; for they are impulsive and improvident, and more alive to sentiments of kindliness and generosity than to the dictates of common sense and prudence, or of principles of justice. Hero has been used to luxury, both in his lodging and board; but human hearts have to do without their food, and shall not his dog's body? I am fond of him, poor fellow, and would fain have him kindly cared for.... I do not consider your parallel a just one—between the bestowing of existence upon flies and the withholding immortality from a portion of the human race, except, indeed, that both may be exercises of arbitrary will and power. It is perfectly true that the clay has no right to say to the Potter, "Wherefore hast Thou fashioned me thus?" or "Why am I a man, and not a beast?" But as regards the Creator's dealings with the human race, inscrutable as His designs are to mortal intelligence, the moral nature of man demands certain conditions in the conditions of his Maker, higher and better than his own; and the idea of a partial immortality seems to me repugnant to the highest human conception (and we have none other) of God's mercy and justice, and that simply because all men, no matter how little advanced in the scale, appear to have some notion of a Divinity and a Deity of some sort, to possess a germ of spiritual progress capable of development beyond the term and opportunities afforded by this existence; and if, as I believe, the progressive nature belong to all, then it seems to me a moral inconsistency to allow its accomplishment only to a few. If you say that whole nations and races formerly and now, and innumerable individuals in our own Christian communities, hardly achieve a single step in this onward career of moral development, I should reply that the progress of the most advanced is but comparative, and far from great, and that chiefly on this account the belief in a future existence appears rational, indeed the only rational mode of accounting for our achieving so much and so little—our advancing so far and no further here. The boon of mere physical existence is great, but if there were none greater, we should not surely possess faculties which suggest that to make some of His moral and rational children immortal, and others not, was not in accordance with the perfect goodness and justice of our Father. This life, good as He pronounced it to be, and as it surely is, would not be worth enjoying but for those nobler faculties that reach beyond it, and even here lay hold of the infinite conception of another after death. To have given these capabilities partially, or rather their fulfilment unequally, seems to me a discord in the divine harmony of that supreme Government, the inscrutability of which does not prevent one seeing and believing, beyond sight, that it is perfectly good. To have bestowed the idea of immortality upon some and not others of his children, seems to me impossible in our Father; and since (no matter how faint in degree or unworthy in kind) this idea appears to be recognized as universal among men, the fulfilment of it only to some favored few seems still more incredible, since 'tis a yearning towards Him felt by all His human creatures—a capacity, no matter how little or erroneously developed, possessed by all.

Admitting God's absolute power over matter, there surely is a moral law which He cannot infringe, for it is Himself; and though I do not know what He can do with the creatures He has made, I know He cannot do Wrong; and if you tell me that my wrong may be His right, I can only reply to that, He is my Right, the only true, real, absolute Right, of which I have any conception, and that to propose that which seems to me wrong as an attribute or proceeding of His seems to me nonsense....

Of course, a good beginning is an especially good thing in education; but I think we are apt to place too much faith, upon the whole, in what we can do with children's minds and souls. Perhaps it is well we should have this faith, or we might do less than we ought, whereas we not unfrequently do a good deal that is without result that we can perceive; nevertheless, the world goes on, and becomes by slow degrees wiser and better.... I met Macready while I was riding to-day; and though I could not stop to say much to him, I told him that I particularly wished to act with him. He has been told, I understand, that I have positively refused to do so; and though his acquaintance with me is slight, I should feel grateful to him if he would believe this, in spite of what representations to the contrary he might have heard. He said that my honesty and truth were known to him, though he had had but little intercourse with me, and that he entirely believed what I said. I was glad of this accidental opportunity of saying this to him, as I would not have sought him for the especial purpose. Good-bye, my dear.

I am ever yours affectionately, FANNY.

BANNISTERS, SOUTHAMPTON, Thursday, 16th. MY DEAREST HAL,

... Mrs. Fitzhugh does not appear to me in her usual vivacious state of mind, and I am afraid I shall not contribute much to her enlivenment, being rather out of spirits myself, and, for the first time in my life, finding Bannisters melancholy.... Walking up a small back street from Southampton the other day, I saw a little child of about five years old standing at a poor mean kind of pastry-cook's window, looking, with eyes of poignant longing, at some baked apples, stale buns, etc. I stopped and asked him if he wished very much for some of those things. He said yes, he wished very much for some baked apples for his poor little brother who was sick. I wish you could have seen the little creature's face when I gave him money to buy what he wanted, and he carried off his baked apples in his arms; that look of profound desire for the sake of his brother, on the poor little childish face has haunted me. I went to see his people, and found them poor and ill, in much distress; and the mother, looking at her youngest child, a sickly, wasted, miserable little object, lamented bitterly that she did not belong to such and such associations, for then, "if it should please God to take the child, she should have five pounds to bury it" (I wonder if these wretches are never killed for the sake of their burial money?); "but now she hadn't so much as would buy a decent rag of mourning"—a useless solicitude, it seemed to me, who think mourning attire a superfluity in all classes.

I have had a letter from the Leamington manager, desiring me to act there, which I will do, some time or other.

I have a riding-habit of my own, and need not hire one at Hastings; but I shall be glad to hire a horse while I am with you, as, you know, I do not mind riding alone.... I feel intensely stupid, which makes me think I must be ill (admire, I beg, the conceit of that inference), as I have no other symptoms of indisposition. Farewell. Give my love to Dorothy.

Ever yours, FANNY.

BANNISTERS, SOUTHAMPTON, Friday, December 17th.

I have spoken with even more than my usual carelessness and inaccuracy upon the subject of my readiness to comply with other people's wishes, but I seriously think one ought to comply with a request of anybody's that was not an impertinent or improper one. I suppose everybody is inclined to fulfil the wishes of persons they love.... But I am not given to the "small attentions," les petits soins of affection, and therefore am always particularly glad to know of any special desire of a friend's that I can comply with; a special wish, too, is a saving of trouble, like the questions in your letters which are equivalent to wishes in another way, and indicate the particular thing you want to know....

I have been out of spirits and much depressed during the first days of my stay at Bannisters, but this gloom passing off, and I am resuming my more habitual buoyancy of temper....

BANNISTERS, December 22d.

If you don't promise me good, I mean wholesome, food, when I come to St. Leonard's, I won't stay with you a minute. I have, for some years past, considered that there was an important deficiency in my human nature, which instead of consisting, like that of most people, of three elements, is wanting in what I should call the middle link between its lowest and highest extremities. Thus, for some time now, I have felt intimately convinced that I had senses and a soul, but no heart; but I have now further come to the conclusion that I have neither sense, soul, nor heart, and am, indeed, nothing but a stomach.... Now, don't retort upon me with starving populations, in and out of poor-houses; and your grand national starving experiment in Ireland; neither try to make me adopt it when I come to St. Leonard's, for I won't....

You will be glad to hear that poor old Mrs. Fitzhugh is better these two or three last days, and, except for the weakness and irritation in her eyes, is tolerably well and comfortable; and I, having recovered from the blue devils, am able to amuse her a little better than I did when first I came. I am glad you mentioned that your comment on my health was meant for fun. A man sat by me in Edinburgh at dinner one day, and asked me if I had ever read Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," which frightened me into an indigestion; and when I told Mr. Combe of it, he gave a sad Scotch laugh, like a postman's knock, "Ha! ha! just like Farquharson's dry humor!"

You say that, as far as my own constitution is concerned, you believe my theories are right. Pray, my dear, did I ever attempt to meddle with your constitution? Permit me to say that the hygienic faith I profess has this in common with my other persuasions, that I am no propagandist, and neither seek nor desire proselytes. No, my dear friend, it is the orthodox medicine-takers, not the heterodox medicine-haters, who are always thrusting their pill-boxes and physic-bottles into their friends' bodies, and dragging or driving their souls to heaven or hell. If my physical doctrine saves my body, and my religious doctrine my soul, alive, it is all I ask of it; and you, and all other of my fellow-creatures, I deliver over to your own devices, to dose, drug, and "oh, fie!" yourselves and each other, according to your own convictions and consciences.

Ever yours, FANNY.

18, ORCHARD STREET, December 28th. MY DEAREST HAL,

I would rather have the "garret" looking towards the sea than the "bedroom" looking over houses, provided I can have a fire in said garret; and pray, since I can have my choice of the two rooms, may I inquire why the one that I do not occupy may not be appropriated to Hayes's use? It seems to me that if there are two empty rooms for me to choose from, I may likewise hire them both if I choose, and give one to my maid, and keep whichever I like best for myself. Che ti pare, figlia mia? Have the goodness, if you can, to take both the vacant rooms for me, and I will inhabit the garret, if, as I said before, it is susceptible of a fire.

I left Mrs. Fitzhugh a little more quiet and composed, in spite of her having just received the news of Lord Harrowby's being at the point of death.... She has had much to try her in the melancholy events at Sandon, and she persists in looking over a whole collection of old letters, among which she found the other day a miniature of her boy, Henry, the sailor who died, which she had forgotten that she possessed; and she comes down from this most trying task of retrospection in a state of nerves so lamentable that no ingenuity of affection, or utmost desire to cheer and relieve her, can suggest a sufficiently soothing process for that purpose. She cannot be amused at all now by anything that does not excite her, and if she is, over-excited she suffers cruelly from it. Thus, the reading of "Jane Eyre," which, while I continued it, kept her in a state of extreme expectation and interest, appeared to me, upon the whole, afterwards, to have affected her very unfavorably....

I will bring you Charles Greville's book about your most painful country, and some music....

Good-bye, dearest Hal. My affectionate love to dear Dorothy.

Ever as ever yours, FANNY.

18, ORCHARD STREET.

... You ask me for my impression of Dejazet, and the piece I went to see her in; and here they are. The piece in which she came out was called "Vert Vert." You remember, no doubt, Gresset's poem about the poor parrot, so called; well, instead of a bird, they make this Vert Vert a young boy of sixteen, brought up in a girls' convent, and taken out for a week, during which he goes to Nevers, falls in with garrison officers, makes love to actresses, sups and gets tipsy at the mess, and, in short, "gets ideas" of all sorts, with which he returns again to his convent. If you can conceive this part, acted to the life by a woman, who moves with more complete disinvoltura in her men's clothes than most men do, you may imagine something of the personal exhibition at which we assisted. As for me, my eyes and mouth opened wider and wider, not so much at the French actress, as at the well-born, well-bred English audience, who, women as well as men, were in a perfect ecstasy of amusement and admiration. I certainly never saw more admirable acting, but neither did I ever see such uncompromising personal exposure and such perfect effrontery of demeanor. I do not think even ballet-dancers more indecent than Mademoiselle Dejazet, for their revelations of their limbs and shapes are partial and momentary, while hers were abiding and entire through the whole of her performance, which she acted in tight-fitting knee-breeches and silk stockings; nor did I ever see such an unflinching representation of unmitigated audacity of carriage, look, and manner, in any male or female, on or off the stage....

She always wears men's clothes, and is seldom seen without a cigar in her mouth. She is extremely witty, and famous for her powers of conversation and pungent repartees. She is plain, and has a disagreeable harsh shrill voice in speaking; her figure is thin, but straight, and well made, and her carriage and movements as graceful as they are free and unembarrassed; her singing voice is sweet, and her singing charming, and her spirit and talent as an actress incomparable. But if I had not seen it, I should not have believed that so impudent a performance would have been tolerated here: tolerated it not only was, but applauded with enthusiasm; and Mademoiselle Dejazet carries the town before her, being the least decent actress of the most indecent pieces I ever saw.

Good-bye. Give my love to Dorothy.

Ever yours, FANNY.

[Offenbach's burlesque Operas were still in the future.]

29, KING STREET, ST. JAMES'S, January 14th.

I have not heard again from Bath, and so have answered your two questions, dearest Hal, and will tell you what little I have to tell of my installation in my new lodging here.

I read the Times, studiously, all the way up to town, and was alone in my railroad carriage. As soon as we reached King Street, I sent Hayes off to Orchard Street, to see for letters, cards, etc. On entering my room (you will remember the upper front room, where we visited Lady W—— together), I saw a beautiful white hyacinth, standing in the window, and knew directly that Emily had sent it to me. I found, too, a most kind and affectionate letter from her.... Fanny Wilson and Mrs. Mitchell had called while I was away, and two gentlemen who had not left their names—probably the Grevilles.... I don't like either my room or my furniture, I am sorry to say; but I shall get attached to both in a couple of days.... At a little after four, Henry Greville called and stayed some time, telling me as usual all manner of gossip—among other things that his brother Charles was supposed to be the author of Jane Eyre! I wonder by whom?

Lord Ellesmere's gout is better, and they have been able to get him down to Hatchford—their place near Weybridge. Henry Greville complained bitterly of Adelaide's not writing to him about their new house in Eaton Place, which she wants him to get papered and prepared for them—a job he is very willing to undertake, provided she will send him detailed and specific instructions, which he is now waiting for in vain, and in great disgust at her laziness.... I worked at my translation of "Mary Stuart" till bedtime.... It is impossible to say how much I miss you and dear Dorothy, and how chilled to the marrow I felt when I had left the warm and kind atmosphere of your affectionate companionship.... However, an additional oppressive sense of my loneliness was the price I was sure to pay for my week's happy fellowship with you and Dorothy. And, after all, it was worth the price.

I wrote this much yesterday, dear Hal; and yesterday is over, and has carried with it my cowardly fit of despondency, and I am already back in the harness of my usual lonely life, and feel the galling on the sore places of my spirit less; ... and every hour will bring occupation and business (such as they are, as Hamlet very contemptuously observes), and I shall have something to do—if not to think of....

I have heard from Norwich, and find I shall have less to prepare than I expected for two nights, Friday and Saturday. I shall act at Yarmouth, and repeat what I play at Norwich.

Mrs. Jameson has taken rooms in this house, I find, and comes here to-night, and I shall be very glad of some of her company.... Certainly London, much as I hate it, agrees better with me than St. Leonard's; either the air or the water there are bad for me. I am much better than when I was there....

God bless you. Kiss your Good Angel for me—how much I love and revere her, and how I rejoice that you have such an inestimable friend and companion! I have been very happy with you, my dear and good and kind friends.

Ever yours, FANNY.

29 KING STREET, ST. JAMES'S, Saturday, January 15th.

I dined at home yesterday, dear Hal, and spent the evening in reading "Vanity Fair." It is extremely clever, but hitherto I do not like it very much. I began it at Bannisters last Winter, and then I did not like it, wonderfully clever as I thought it. Lord Ellesmere says it is better than anything of the kind (novels of manners and morals) since Fielding; but as far as I have yet gone in it, it seems to me to have one very disagreeable quality—the most prominent people in it are thorough worldlings, and though their selfishnesses, and meannesses, and dirtinesses, and pettinesses, are admirably portrayed—to the very life, indeed—I do not much rejoice in their company. It is only within the last year that I have been able to get through "Gil Blas," for the same reason; and though I did get through, I never got over the odiousness of the people I lived with during the four volumes of his experiences of life.

Is not Shakespeare true to human nature? Why does he never disgust one with it? Why does one feel comparatively clean in spirit after living with his creatures? Some of them are as bad as real men and women ever were, but some of them are as good as real men and women ever are; and one does not lose one's respect for one's kind while reading what he writes of it; and his coarse utterances, the speech of his time, hurt one comparatively little in the midst of his noble and sweet thoughts....

I am going with Henry Greville to Drury Lane to-night, and perhaps he will eat his dinner here. He has a perfect mania for playhouses, and cannot keep out of them, and I would as lief spend my evening in hearing pretty music as alone here....

I drove up and down Regent Street three times in vain to find your identical cutler, Mr. Kingsbury: perhaps he has left off business, and some one else has taken his shop. So what shall I do with your scissors? Do you think if I talk to them they will be sharpened?...

I have not heard again from Bath, and have seen nobody but Fanny Wilson, with whom I dine to-morrow, and Mrs. Mitchell's two boys....

I shall get through my packing very well. Hayes is greatly improved, and really begins now to be useful to me. Thus we most of us begin only just as we come to the end and leave off.

I was driving about all yesterday, doing commissions; to-day the sun shines, and I am going to wade in the mud for my health.

God bless you. Kiss dear Dorothy for me.

Ever yours, FANNY.

NORWICH, Wednesday, January 20th.

I have found your cutler, Kingsbury; and very glad I was to find him, for I hate not being able to execute a commission exactly as I am desired to do....

When I said that people never love others better than themselves, I did not mean more, but in a better way than they love themselves. I mean that those who are conscientious in their self-regard will be conscientious in their regard for others, and that it takes good people to make good friends; and I do not consider this a "paradox of mine," as you uncivilly style it. It is a conviction of mine, and I feel sure that you agree with it, whatever your first impression of my meaning may have been when I said that people never loved others better than themselves (i.e., with a better kind of love). I know that very unprincipled people are capable of affection, and their affection partakes of their want of principle: people have committed crimes for the sake of the love they bore their wives, mistresses (oftener), and children; and half the meannesses, pettinesses, and selfishnesses of which society is full, have their source in unprincipled affection as much as in unprincipled self-love.

I had already taken to my King Street lodging when I left it for this place. You know I have a horror of new places and a facility in getting over it, which is a double disadvantage in this wandering life of mine; for I am perpetually undergoing the process of feeling miserable and lonely in a new place, and more miserable and lonely still when I leave it. The room I have here is gloomy, but opens into my bedroom, which is comfortable, and I shall soon attain the easy liking of habit for it.

Mrs. ——, dear Harriet, is without tact, and learns nothing, which is one reason why, in spite of her many good qualities and accomplishments, I cannot get on with her. I breakfasted with her on Sunday morning, and she abused A—— to me—not violently, of course, but very foolishly. She is wanting in perception, and is perpetually committing sins of bad taste, which provoke people—and me "much more than reason." I do not suppose I shall see enough of her to admit of her "drying me up" (as the Italians say for boring), but I always find it difficult to get on with her, even for a short time.

There is an element of ungenuineness about her, I believe quite involuntary; ... and it does not so much consist in telling stories, though I believe she would do that on proper occasions, like everybody else (but you, who never would know which were proper occasions), as in a crooked or indirect moral vision, an incapacity for distinguishing what is straight from what is not, which affects me very unpleasantly.

On Saturday evening I went to Drury Lane, with Henry and Charles Greville, the latter having invited himself to join us. I spent a rather dolorous three hours hearing indifferent music, indifferently sung, and admiring compassionately the mental condition of such a man as my friend Henry, who must needs divert himself with such an entertainment, having, moreover, taste enough to know what is really good, and yet persuading himself that this was not bad, only because to him anything is better than spending an evening quietly alone at home.... On the other hand, several things struck me a good deal. The music of the opera was poor, but it was not worse than much of Donizetti's music, and it was composed by an Englishman. It was put together with considerable skill and cleverness, but was far less agreeable than the poorest Italian music of the same order; and it was well executed, by a good orchestra, chiefly composed of English musicians. The principal singers were all English, and some of them had fine voices, and though they seldom used them well, they did so occasionally; and, upon the whole, did not sing much worse than Italian performers of the same class would have done. The choruses and concerted pieces, also all given by English people, were well executed, though stupid and tiresome in themselves; and certainly the progress our people have made in music in my time, to which the whole opera testified, is very great. The audience was very numerous, and though the galleries were crowded, and it is Christmas-time, and the after-piece was the pantomime, there was not the slightest noise, or riot, or disturbance, even among "the gods," and the pieces in the opera which were encored, were redemanded in the polite fashion of the Queen's Theatre, by a prolonged, gentle clapping, without a single shout or shriek of "Hangcor!" or "Brayvo!" This is a wonderful change within my recollection, for I remember when, during the run of a pantomime, the galleries presented a scene of scandalous riot and confusion; bottles were handed about, men sat in their shirt-sleeves, and the shouting, shrieking, bawling, squalling, and roaring were such as to convert the performance of the first piece into mere dumb show.

All this is well, and testifies to an improved civilization, and not to a mere desire to ape those above them in society; for that could hardly suffice to persuade these Drury Lane audiences that they are amused by a tiresome piece tiresomely acted, and tedious musical strains, of which they cannot carry away a single phrase, which sets nobody's foot tapping or head bobbing with rhythmical sympathy, being all but devoid of melody.

I am very fond of music, but I would rather have sat out the poorest play than that imitation opera; the scenery, dresses, decorations, etc., were all very good, and testified to the much more cultivated taste of the times in all these matters.

On Sunday I dined with the Horace Wilsons, whom I had not seen for some time, and for whom I have a very great regard, ... Returning home, I stopped at dear old Miss Cottin's.... I am much attached to her, and think, next to my own dear Aunt Dall, she is one of the sweetest and most unselfish creatures I have ever known, and love her accordingly....

I left London for this place on Monday morning, and having a sulky deliberate cab-driver, arrived at the station just five minutes after the train had departed. This kept me waiting from 11.30 till 3.30, during which time Hayes, thinking I should be hungry, went out privately, and coming back with a paper of biscuits, pointed out a raspberry tart at the bottom of it, and said, "Here is a little tart I have got on purpose for you." Was not that courtly and kind of her?

I act here till Thursday. Friday and Saturday I act at Yarmouth; and I shall return to town on Sunday, unless the Vice-Chancellor should allow the manager to open the Cambridge Theatre, which is not generally allowed during term; if he should, I shall act there on Monday night, and only return to town Tuesday morning.

I have promised Mrs. Grote to go down to the Beeches on Saturday, 29th, and shall only stay there till Monday, 31st. This is all I know of myself at present, except that I am

Affectionately yours, FANNY.

DEAR DOROTHY,

Here is my love with my pen and ink, which I flatter myself are as wretchedly bad as those of any gentlewoman in the universe, and St. Leonard's.

You may be impertinent to Hal; she is only a bully, and will give in if you try: if you don't like to try, as you are meek and lowly, I'll try for you, when I come down, if you'll give me your power-of-attorney and instructions, without which I don't suppose I should know how to be impertinent. Farewell, dearest Dorothy. I love you entirely for your own sake; I don't like mixing up matters, and thank God for you, for Harriet's sake, as often as I think of you both.

BEGUN AT NORWICH, FINISHED AT YARMOUTH, Friday, 21st.

I do but poorly at Norwich, my dearest Hal, in body and estate, having a wretched influenza, sore throat, sore chest, and cold in my head, through which I am obliged to stand bare-necked and bare-armed, bare-headed and almost bare-footed (for the thin silk stockings and satin shoes are a poor protection), on the stage, to houses, I am sorry to say, as thin as my stockings; so that the money return for all this fatigue, discomfort, and expense is but inconsiderable, i.e. by comparison, for undoubtedly it is a fair harvest for such grain as I sow.

My mind rather thrives upon this not too prosperous condition of my body and estate, inasmuch as I naturally make some effort to be courageous and cheerful, and therefore do better in that respect than when I was cheerful and needed no courage, while you were spoiling me at St. Leonard's with all your love for me, and Dorothy with all her love for you.

In half an hour I leave this place for Yarmouth, where I act to-night and to-morrow. The manager has made an arrangement with me to act at his theatres at Lynn and Cambridge next week, so that instead of returning to London the day after to-morrow, I shall not do so until Friday, 28th....

We have dismal weather, snow on the ground, and blackness in the skies. My poor Hayes has got the influenza too, and goes hacking and snivelling at my heels like an unpleasant echo. I shall be thankful for both our sakes when our winter work is over, for the exposure is very great; and though, of course, she has much less of it than I have, she bears it worse, catches colds oftener, and keeps them longer than I do....

I should, I believe, find it very difficult indeed to be economical, and yet I suppose that if I felt the duty and necessity of it I should be more so than I am. The saving of money without any special motive for it does not appear to me desirable, any more than self-denial without a sufficient motive—and I do not call mere mortification such—appears to me reasonable. I do not feel called upon to curtail the comforts of my daily life, for in some respects it is always miserable, and in many respects often inevitably very uncomfortable; and while I am laboring to spare sacrifice and disgrace to others, I do not see any very strong motive for not applying a sufficient portion of the money I work so hard for, to make my wandering and homeless life as endurable as I can....

Your mode of living is without pretension, and without expenditure for mere appearances; and I feel certain that appearances, and not the positive and necessary comforts of life, such as sufficient firing and food, are the heaviest expenses of gentlefolks.... If the life is more than meat or raiment, which I quite agree to, meat and raiment are more than platters and trimmings; and it is the style that half the time necessitates the starvation....

Now I am at Yarmouth; though t'other side the page I was at Norwich. The earth is white, the sea is black, the sky gray, and everything most melancholy. I act here to-night, and to-morrow and on Sunday go on to Lynn, where I act Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; and Thursday at Cambridge. On Friday I go back to town, and on Saturday to Mrs. Grote's. I am in just such a little room as those we used to pass in walking along the Parade at St. Leonard's—a small ground-floor room, about sixteen feet square, the side facing the sea, one large bow-window in three compartments; just such a gravel terrace before it as the one we walked up and down together; and the very same sea, dark, neutral-tinted, with its frothing edge of white, as if it was foaming at the mouth in a black convulsion, that your eyes look upon from your window. It is in some respects exactly like St. Leonard's, and again as much the reverse as sad loneliness is to loving and delightful companionship.

I have a sort of lost-child feeling whenever I go to a strange place, that very few people who know me would give me credit for; but that's because they don't know me.

God bless you, dear. Kiss dear Dorothy for me.

I am ever yours, FANNY.

YARMOUTH, 22d.

My very dear and most sententious friend, I never do run the time of my departure for railroad trains "to the chances of free streets and fast-driving cabmen;" I always allow amply for all accidents, as I have a greater horror of being hurried and jostled even than of being too late. But my driver, the day I left town, was, I think, inexperienced as well as sulky. He was very young, and though I was too ignorant of city localities to direct him positively, my recollection of the route which I had traversed before seemed to me to indicate that he did not take the most direct way.

You ask me what I think of E——'s note, and if it seems "wonderfully aristocratic" to me. Aristocratic after the English fashion, which, thank God, is far from being a very genuine fashion—their "airs" being for the most part adulterated by the good, sound, practical common sense of the race, as their blood is polluted with the wholesome, vigorous, handsome, intelligent vital fluid of the classes below them. No real aristocrat would have mentioned Miss ——'s maiden name as if she was a woman of family—(nee—geborne; that was a delightful German woman who said she wasn't geborne at all)—for Miss ——, being only a banker's daughter, was, of course "nobody."

The real aristocratic principle is not—I say again, thank God!—often to be found among us islanders of Britain. In Austria, where the Countess Z—— and the Princess E—— are looked upon as the earth under the feet of the Vienna nobility, the one being Lord S——'s daughter and the other Lord J——'s, they have a better notion of the principle of the question. There were only four families in all the British peerage who could have furnished their daughter with the requisite number of quarterings for one of those Austrian alliances.

In folly, as in wisdom, a principle is at least consistent; but that the aristocratic pretensions of our upper class can never be: for our gentry is of more ancient date in a great many instances, and our nobles are, fortunately for themselves and us, a mixed race, admitting to the temporary fellowship of social companionship and the permanent alliance of matrimony, wealth, influence, beauty, and talent from every grade beneath them; therefore they are fit to endure, and will endure longer than any other European aristocracy, in spite of Prince Puckler Muskau's epigram against the most "mushroom of nobilities."

The "airs" they do give themselves are, therefore, very droll, whereas the similar pretensions of an Austrian creme de la creme are comprehensible and consistent—folly without a flaw, and rather admirable in its kind as a specimen of human absurdity.... I have the honor of being slightly acquainted with E——'s portrait painter. He is a Scotch gentleman, of very great merit as an artist. He was in Rome the winter I was there, and I met him in society, and saw several of his pictures. He was rather injured artistically, I think, by living with mad lords and silly ladies who used to pet and spoil him, which sort of thing damages our artists, who become bitten with the "aristocratic" mania, and destroy themselves as fine workmen in their desire to become fine gentlemen.

There was a story in Rome about Lady C—— and the German princess, Lady D——, going one day to Mr. ——'s studio and finding his fire out, falling down on their own fair knees, and with their own fair hands kindling it again for him. After this, how could he paint anything less than a countess? Jesting apart, however, my dear Hal, the terms Mr. —— asks are very high; and though he is a very elegant and graceful portrait-painter, I would rather, upon the whole, sit to Richmond, whose chalk drawings are the same price, and whose style is as good and more vigorous.

You ask me why Mrs. ——, who is undoubtedly a clever woman, is also undoubtedly a silly one?

If I wished to be saucy, which I never do and never am, I should tell you, being an Irishwoman, that it was because she was Irish, and, therefore, capable of a sort of intellectual bull; but, unluckily, though ingenious, this is not true. The sort of ability or abilities, to which we give the ill-defined name of "cleverness," is entirely distinct from common sense, judgment, discretion; so distinct as to be almost their opposite. I think a clever woman requires quite an unusual portion of the above qualities not to be silly, because she is clever. This may sound paradoxical, but if you think it worth examining, you will find it true.

I am very cold and very comfortless in these horrible theatres, and shall be glad to get back to King Street, and as soon as I am there will take measures about my readings, which I think I had better begin in earnest with.

There are no rocks on the beach here, like that pretty little reef that runs right out before your windows, but three miles from the shore there is a fatal stretch of sand where wrecks are frequent, and all along which ominous white clouds are springing up from the inky surface of the wintry sea, like warning ghosts. It is very dreary and dismal looking; but, nevertheless, as I have no rehearsal, I am going out to walk. Kiss Dorothy for me. I am yours and hers most affectionately,

FANNY.

I have had another foolish note from Lady —— about "Jane Eyre"—the universal theme of conversation and correspondence—in which, speaking of herself, she says that she is "dished and done for, and gone to the dogs;" and then accuses the writer of "Jane Eyre" of not knowing how ladies and gentlemen talk—which I think, too; but the above expressions are a peculiar example of refined conventional language, which perhaps the author of that very remarkable book would have hesitated to ascribe to a lady—or a gentleman.

BIRNHAM BEECHES, Sunday, March 20th, and KING STREET, Friday, February 1st, 1848.

Now I have two long letters of yours to answer, and my own opinion is that they will not be answered until I get to the Beeches, and have a few hours' breathing-time, for I am just now setting off for Cambridge, where I act to-night. To-morrow I travel to Bury St. Edmund's, and act there the same night; and Friday I shall just get to London in time for my dinner, and the next morning I go down to Birnham.... The air of St. Leonard's, though you call it cold and sharp, was mild compared with the raw, sunless climate I have since enjoyed at Lynn and Yarmouth; a bracing climate always suits me better than a relaxing one.... I cannot, however, agree with you that there is more "excitement" in rehearsing every morning, and sitting in a dull, dirty, hired room, and acting that everlasting "Hunchback" every evening, than in being your mounted escort to Bex Hill and Fairlight church, and reading to you either "Mary Stuart" or "Jane Eyre." I am glad to see that L—— and I agree about what always seems to me the most improbable part of the latter very remarkable book. I am slow in determining in my own mind the course that other women would pursue in exceptionally difficult circumstances; many of them would doubtless display an amount of principle of which I should be quite incapable; and so I am glad that L—— thinks, as I do, that Jane Eyre's safest course would have been to have left Thornfield without meeting her lover's despair.

Fever at the gates of Ardgillan, my dear Hal, must indeed make you anxious; but as your family have moved thence, I suppose they will not return while there is any danger to be apprehended from doing so.

And now, dear Hal, from the Beeches, where I arrived yesterday afternoon, and am now writing to you.... I have really kept both cold and cough down wonderfully, considering the horrible weather and exposure I have gone through travelling, and in those damp barns of theatres. Hayes will certainly not recover as soon as I do, for she has all the aversion of her class to physic and spare diet....

Charles Greville is here, and I asked him your question, if he had ever published any other book but the one upon Ireland you are reading. He said no. He has, however, written pamphlets and newspaper articles of considerable ability upon political subjects. I have been taking a long walk, and will now resume my letter to you. I perceive I have brought Charles Greville and his book into the middle of what I was telling you about those poor young Norwich actors.

A very pretty and charming niece of my dear friend, Mr. Harness, is married and living within a short distance of Lynn, and as I had not time to stay with her now, I have promised to go back into Norfolk to visit her, and at the same time I have promised to act a night for these poor people if they can get their manager's leave for me to do so.

My dear Hal, this letter seems destined to pass its unfinished existence on the railroads. I am now at this present moment finishing it in my King Street lodging, to which I returned yesterday afternoon, Mrs. Grote being seized in the morning with one of her attacks of neuralgia, for which she is obliged to take such a quantity of morphine that she is generally in a state of stupor for four and twenty to thirty hours. The other guests departed in the morning, and I in the afternoon, after giving her medicine to her, and seeing her gradually grow stupid under its effect. Poor woman, she is a wretched sufferer, and I think these attacks of acute pain in her head answerable for some of the singularity of her demeanor and conversation, which are sometimes all but unaccountably eccentric.

You ask me if I saw anything on that bitter cold journey, as I went along, to interest me. You know I am extremely fond of the act of travelling: being carried through new country excites one's curiosity and stimulates one's powers of observation very agreeably, even when nothing especially beautiful or noteworthy presents itself in the landscape. I had never seen the east counties of England before, and am glad to have become acquainted with their aspect, though it is certainly not what is usually called picturesque. The country between Norwich and Yarmouth is like the ugliest parts of Holland, swampy and barren; the fens of Lincolnshire flat and uninteresting, though admirably drained, cultivated, and fertile. Ely Cathedral, of which I only saw the outside, is magnificent, and the most perfect view of it is the one from the railroad, as one comes from Lynn.

Lynn itself is a picturesque and curious old town, full of remains of ancient monastic buildings. The railroad terminus is situated in a property formerly part of a Carthusian convent, and the wheelwrights' and blacksmiths' and carpenters' cottages are built partly in the old monkish cells, of which two low ranges remain round a space now covered with sleepers, and huge chains, and iron rails, and all the modern materials of steam travel.

Cambridge, of course, I saw nothing of. On the road between it and Bury St. Edmund's one passes over Newmarket heath, the aspect of which is striking, apart from its "associations." Bury St. Edmund's—which is famous, as you know, for its beautiful old churches and relics of monastic greatness—I saw nothing of, but was most kindly and hospitably sheltered by Mr. Donne, who, being now the father of sons, is living in Bury in order to educate them at the school where he and my brothers were as boys under Dr. Malkin. [William Bodham Donne, my brother John's school and college mate, for more than fifty years of this changeful life the unchanged, dear, and devoted friend of me and mine—accomplished scholar, elegant writer, man of exquisite and refined taste, and such a gentleman that my sister always said he was the original of the hero of Boccaccio's story of the "Falcon."]

God bless you, my dear. I have a pain in my chest, and bad cough, which don't prevent my being

Yours most truly, FANNY.

29, KING STREET, Thursday, 3d.

It is no longer the bitter cold morning on which you asked me how I was, and now I cannot for the life of me remember how or where I was on that said 26th. Oh, it was last Wednesday, and I was travelling from Lynn to Cambridge, and I was pretty well, and had a pleasant railroad trip, the gentlemen in the railroad carriage with me being intelligent and agreeable men, and one of them well acquainted with my brother John, and all his Cambridge contemporaries. Though it was cold, too, the sun shone, and threw long streaks of brightness across the fens of Lincolnshire, producing effects on the unfrequent and in themselves unpicturesque farm-houses, with their groups of wintry skeleton-trees exactly like those in the Dutch pictures, which are, for the most part, representations of just such landscapes.

Mitchell sent me yesterday a box at the French theatre for a morning performance of the "Antigone," with Mendelssohn's choruses. Previous to the performance of the Greek drama, they played, very inappropriately it seems to me, his music of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and the effect of it upon my nerves was such that, though screened by the curtain of the box, and my sobs drowned by the orchestra, I thought I should have been obliged to leave the theatre. It is the first time that I have heard a note of Mendelssohn's music since his death.

How thankful I am I did not attempt that reading at the Palace! What should I have done there, thus convulsed with pain and sorrow, in the midst of those strange people, and the courtly conventions of their condition! Oh, what a bitter, bitter loss to the world, and all who loved him, has been the death of that bright and amiable great genius!

The Greek play was given in the true Grecian fashion, and was interesting and curious as a spectacle. The French literal translation of the grand old tragedy seemed at once stilted and bald, and yet I perceived and felt through it the power of the ancient solemn Greek spell; and though strange and puppet-like in its outward form, I was impressed by its stern and tragic simplicity. It is, however, merely an archaeological curiosity, chiefly interesting as a reproduction of the times to which it belongs. To modern spectators, unless they are poets or antiquarians, I should think it must be dull, and so I find it is considered, in spite of Mendelssohn's fine music, which, indeed, is so well allied in spirit to the old tragedy, that to most listeners I dare say it has something of the dreamy dreariness of the drama itself.

Mrs. Jameson was with me, and it was chiefly on her account that I did not give way to my impulse to leave the theatre.

Good-bye. God bless you, my dear.

Ever yours, FANNY.

[The foregoing letter refers to my having declined to read the "Antigone" at Buckingham Palace, under the following circumstances. My father was desired to do so, but his very serious deafness made his reading anything to which there was an occasional accompaniment of music difficult to him, and he excused himself; at the same time, unfortunately for me, he suggested that I should be applied to to read the play. Accordingly, I received a message upon the subject, but was obliged to decline the honor of reading at the Palace, for reasons which had not occurred to my father when he answered for my accepting the task he had been unable to undertake. I had never yet read at all in public, and to make my first experiment of my powers before the queen, and under circumstances calculated to increase my natural nervousness and embarrassment, seemed hardly respectful to her, and almost impossible to me.

Then, for my first attempt of the kind, to select a play accompanied by Mendelssohn's music, of which I had not heard one bar since the shock of his death, was to incur the almost certain risk of breaking down in an uncontrollable paroxysm of distress, and perhaps being unable to finish my performance.

What I endured at the St. James's Theatre, on the occasion I have spoken of in this letter, confirms me in my conviction that I couldn't have attempted what was proposed to me with a reasonable chance of being able to fulfil my task.

I was told afterwards that I had been guilty of "disloyal disobedience to a royal command,"—a severe sentence, which I do not think I had deserved, and found it painful to bear.]

KING STREET, Saturday, February 9th, 1848.

Mrs. Jameson is no longer in the house with me, dearest Hal. She went away the other day from the theatre, where we were hearing Mendelssohn's "Antigone" together, and will probably not return for some time; when she does, I shall most likely be out of town.

I saw Mitchell yesterday, and he entirely declines to have anything whatever to do with my readings—ainsi me voila bien! I cried like a baby the whole of the day afterwards; of course my nerves were out of order, or I should have chosen some less rubbishy cause among the various excellent reasons for tears I have to select from.

Mr. Harness and Charles and Henry Greville came to see me in the course of the day. The latter rather bullied me, said I behaved like a child: and so I certainly did; but, oh, my dear Hal, if you knew how little these, my most intimate friends, know about me, and how much more able and fit they think me to fight and struggle for myself than I am! They are all very kind in suggesting many things: Henry Greville is urgent with me to undertake the speculation of giving readings at my own risk—hiring a room, and sending out advertisements, etc.; but this I will not do, as I am willing' to work hard for very small gains, but not to jeopardize any portion of the small gains for which I have worked hard. Am I right in your opinion and that of dear Dorothy? In the mean time, I have written off to the Secretary of the Collegiate Institution at Liverpool, who proposed to me last year to give readings there, and have told him that I shall be glad to do so now if it still suits the purposes of the Institution. He, however, may have changed his mind, as Mitchell has done, and in that case I must sit down and eat my present savings, and thank God that I have savings for the present to eat....

Dear old Rogers came yesterday, and sat with me some time; and talking over my various difficulties with me, said I had much better go and live with him, and take care of his house for him. It's a pretty house, but I'm afraid it would be no sinecure to be his housekeeper....

How is your poor knees and wrists, and all your rheumatical fastenings and hinges, and Dorothy's interieur? I hope she is not tyrannizing over you with unnecessary questions and inquiries, which merely serve to trammel your free-will, by asking you where you have been walking, or if it rained while you were out.

I send you a kiss, which I beg you will give each other for me, or otherwise divide without quarrelling, and believe me

Very affectionately yours, FANNY.

29, KING STREET.

... Oh yes, my dear Hal, I hear abundance of discussion of the present distracted aspect of public affairs, abroad and at home; but for the most part the opinions that I hear, and the counsels that are suggested to meet the evils of the times, seem to me as much indications of the faithlessness and folly of men, as the great movements of nations are of the faithfulness and wisdom of God.

Still, when I hear clever, practical politicians talk, I always listen with keen interest; for the details in which they seem to me too much absorbed, are a corrective to my generalizing tendency on all such subjects.

Moral principles are the true political laws (mere abstract truisms, as they are held, and accordingly overlooked, by working statesmen) by which the social world is kept in cohesion, just as the physical world is kept in equilibrium by the attracting and repelling forces that control its elements.

You ask me how many letters I am in your debt. When I shall have finished this, only one. I have worked very hard this past week to keep your claims down, but have only just now got my head above water with you.

There was nothing to like at Lynn. The weather was gloomy and cold, and I was only there two days. There seemed to be a good many curious remains of antiquity in and about the town—old churches, houses, gateways, and porches—but I had no leisure to look at these, and indeed the weather was almost too severe to admit of standing about sight-seeing, even under the warmest zeal for instruction.

I did not find the sea air make me sleep at Lynn, and incline to think that it is you, more than the climate that affects me so soporifically at St. Leonard's.

God bless you, dear.

Your affectionate, FANNY.

29, KING STREET, ST. JAMES'S.

I do not know how right I am in saying Lady —— married because she was jilted, inasmuch as of my own personal knowledge I do not know it; but that she was much attached to Lord ——, whose father would not permit the marriage, I have heard repeatedly from people who knew both the families; and Rogers, who was very intimate with hers, told me that he considered her marrying as she did the result of mere disappointment, saying, "She could not have the man she loved, so she gave herself to the man who loved her." So much in explanation of my rather rash statement about that most beautiful lady I ever saw.

I have seen a good many handsome people, but there was a modesty, grace, and dignity, and an expression of deep latent sentiment in that woman's countenance, that, combined with her straight nymph-like figure, and the sort of chastity that characterized her whole person and appearance, fulfilled my ideal of female beauty. You will perhaps wonder at my use of the word "chastity," as applied merely to a style of beauty; but "chaste" is the word that describes it properly. Of all the Venuses of antique art, the Venus of Milo, that noble and keenly intellectual goddess of beauty, is the only one that I admire.

The light, straight-limbed Artemis is lovelier to me than the round soft sleepy Aphrodite; and it was to the character of her figure, and the contour of her head and face, that I applied the expression "chaste" in speaking of Lady ——. Her sister, who is thought handsomer, and is a lovely creature (and morally and mentally as worthy of that epithet as physically), has not this severely sweet expression, or sweetly stern, if you prefer it, though this implies a shade of volition, which falsifies the application of it. This is what I especially admire in Lady ——, who adds to that faultless Greek outline, which in its integrity and justness of proportion seems the type of truth, an eye whose color deepens, and a fine-textured cheek, where the blood visibly mantles with the mere emotion of speaking and being listened to.

The first time I met her was at a dinner-party at Miss Berry's, before her marriage. She sat by Landseer, and her great admiration for him, and enthusiastic devotion to his fine art, in which she was herself a proficient, lent an interest to their conversation, which exhibited itself in her beautiful face in a manner that I have never forgotten....

You bid me tell you how I am in mind, body, and estate. My mind is in a tolerably wholesome frame, my body not so well, having a cold and cough hanging about it, and suffering a good deal of pain the last few days. My estate is so far flourishing that I brought back a tolerable wage and earnings from my eastern expedition, and so shall not have to sell out any of my small funded property for my daily bread yet a while.

You say that tact is not necessarily insincerity. No, I suppose not: I must say I suppose, because I have never known anybody, eminently gifted with tact, who appeared to me perfectly sincere. I am told that the woman I have just been writing about, Lady C——, of whom my personal knowledge is too slight to judge how far she deserves the report, never departs from the truth; and yet is so gentle, good, and considerate, that she never wounds anybody's feelings. If this is so, it deserves a higher title than tact, and appears to me a great attainment in the prime grace of Christianity. I have always believed that where love—charity—abounded, truth might, and could, and would abound without offence. Which of the great French divines said, "Quand on n'est point dans les bornes de la charite, on n'est bientot plus dans celles de la verite"? It sounds like Fenelon, but I believe it is Bossuet. Tact always appears to me a sort of moral elegance, an accomplishment, rather than a virtue; dexterity, as it were, doing the work of sensibility and benevolence.