my book is out, I have nothing to do; and the streets are perambulated by such picturesque-looking gentlemen in dark blue, that one forgets they are policemen, and fancies them into heroes.

Miss Fanny Kemble has produced such a sensation. I have not seen her. I want to see her in some other character than Juliet. I am afraid you will think it high treason; but it is not a favourite play of mine: it is anything but my beau-ideal of love. Juliet falls in love too suddenly, and avows it too openly; and Romeo changes too suddenly from one lady to another; to my thought their love wants sentiment. Viola is my pet: so devoted—so subdued; began in girlhood—cherished as the lonely but deep feeling of after years; I think Shakspeare never drew a more exquisite picture of feminine love!"

At another time she writes:

"I take it for granted you intend attacking my most ungrateful self, and write to petition against meeting with my deserts. My only excuse for not writing is in the spirit of the French philosopher—the best thing you can do for your friends is to let them forget you. I do think I never passed so unfortunate or so miserable a year as since we last met. * * Once in difficulties, there you may remain; debts are like cross-roads, one leads into another; and it really is a very extravagant thing to be poor. * * If I could have seen you how glad I should have been to have talked to you; and the real cause why I have not written is, that to write a letter one must be by oneself; I then get thinking my own thoughts, till I am too much out of spirits to write. As for news, it is barely pos-