trustfulness. It will never be so full of wine as it is to-day of affectionate regard. Ever faithfully yours. CCCCXLVIII. MISS HOGARTH CHELTENHAM, Friday, January 3, 1862. MY DEAREST GEORGY, Mrs. Macready in voice is very like poor Mrs. Macready dead and gone; not in the least like her otherwise. She is perfectly satisfactory, and exceedingly winning. Quite perfect in her manner with him and in her ease with his children, sensible, gay, pleasant, sweet-tempered; not in the faintest degree stiff or pedantic; accessible instantly. I have very rarely seen a more agreeable woman. The house is (on a smaller scale) any house we have known them in. Furnished with the old furniture, pictures, engravings, mirrors, tables, and chairs. Butty is too tall for strength, I am afraid, but handsome, with a face of great power and character, and a very nice girl. Katie you know all about. Macready, decidedly much older and infirm. Very much changed. His old force has gone out of him strangely. I don't think I left off talking a minute from the time of my entering the house to my going to bed last night, and he was as much amused and interested as ever I saw him; still he was, and is, unquestionably aged. And even now I am obliged to cut this letter short by having to go and look after Headland. It would never do to be away from the rest of them. I have no idea what we are doing here; no notion whether things are right or wrong; no conception where the room is; no hold of the business at all. For which reason I cannot rest without going and looking after the worthy man. CCCCXLIX. THE SAME TORQUAY, Wednesday, January 8, 1862. You know, I think, that I was very averse to going to Plymouth, and would not have gone there again but for poor Arthur. But on the last night I read "Copperfield," and positively enthralled the people. It was a most overpowering effect, and poor Andrew came behind the screen, after the 1 Lieutenant Andrew Gordon, R. N., son of the Sheriff of Midlothian. storm, and cried in the best and manliest manner. Also there were two or three lines of his shipmates and other sailors, and they were extraordinarily affected. But its culminating effect was on Macready at Cheltenham. When I got home after "Copperfield," I found him quite unable to speak, and able to do nothing but square his dear old jaw all on one side, and roll his eyes (half closed), like Jackson's picture of him. And when I said something light about it, he returned: "No er-Dickens! I swear to Heaven that, as a piece of passion and playfulness-er- indescribably mixed up together, it doesno, really, Dickens! amaze me as profoundly as it moves me. But as a piece of art- and you know er - that I — no, Dickens! By- - have seen the best art in a great time - it is incomprehensible to me. How is it got atis it done er how one man can - well? er er - how It lays me on my er — back, and it is of no use talking about it!" With which he put his hand upon my breast and pulled out his pockethandkerchief, and I felt as if I were doing somebody to his Werner. Katie, by the bye, is a wonderful audience, and has a great fund of wild feeling in her. Johnny not at all unlike Plorn. I have not yet seen the room here, but imagine it to be very small. Exeter I know, and that is small also. I am very much used up, on the whole, for I cannot bear this moist warm climate. It would kill me very soon. And I have now got to the point of taking so much out of myself with "Copperfield," that I might as well do Richard Wardour. You have now, my dearest Georgy, the fullest extent of my tidings. This is a very pretty place — a compound of Hastings, Tunbridge Wells, and little bits of the hills about Naples; but I met four respirators as I came up from the station, and three pale curates without them, who seemed in a bad way. Frightful intelligence has just been brought in by Boylett, concerning the small size of the room. I have terrified Headland by sending him to look at it, and swearing that if it's too small I will go away to Exeter. CCCCL. SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, Kent, 1. I think you undoubtedly have the right to forbid the turning of your play into an opera. 2. I do not think the production of such an opera in the slightest degree likely to injure the play or to render it a less valuable property than it is now. If it could have any effect on so standard and popular a work as "The Lady of Lyons," the effect would, in my judgment, be beneficial. But I believe the play to be high above any such influence. 3. Assuming you do consent to the adaptation, in a desire to oblige Oxenford, I would not recommend your asking any pecuniary compensation. This for two reasons: firstly, because the compensation could only be small at the best; secondly, because your taking it would associate you (unreasonably, but not the less assuredly) with the opera. The only objection I descry is purely one of feeling. Pauline trotting about in front of the float, invoking the orchestra with a limp pocket-handkerchief, is a notion that makes goose-flesh of my back. Also a yelping tenor going away to the wars in a scene half an hour long is painful to contemplate. Damas, too, as a bass, with a grizzled bald head, blatantly bellowing about Years long ago, When the sound of the drum First made his blood glow With a rum ti tum tum rather sticks in my throat; but there really seems to me to be no other objection, if you can get over this. Ever affectionately. CCCCLI. THE MISSES ARMSTRONG GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESter, Kent, Monday, February 10, 1862. MY DEAR GIRLS, - For if I were to write " young friends," it would look like a schoolmaster; and if I were to write 66 young ladies," it would look like a schoolmistress; and worse than that, neither form of words would look familiar and natural, or in character with our snowy ride that tooth-chattering morning. I cannot tell you both how gratified I was by your remembrance, or how often I think of you as I smoke the admirable cigars. But I almost think you must have had some magnetic consciousness across the Atlantic of my whiffing my love towards you from the garden here. My daughter says that when you have settled those little public affairs at home, she hopes you will come back to England (possibly in united states) and give a minute or two to this part of Kent. Her words are, a day or two;" but I remember your Italian flights, and correct the message. 66 I have only just now finished my country readings, and have had nobody to make breakfast for me since the remote ages of Colchester! Ever faithfully yours. CCCCLII. M. DE CERJAT 16, HYDE PARK Gate, South Kensington Gore, Sunday, March 16, 1862. MY DEAR CERJAT, My daughter naturally liking to be in town at this time of year, I have changed houses with a friend for three months. My eldest boy is in business as an Eastern merchant in the City, and will do well if he can find continuous energy; otherwise not. My second boy is with the 42d Highlanders in India. My third boy, a good steady fellow, is educating expressly for engineers or artillery. My fourth (this sounds like a charade), a born little sailor, is a midshipman in H. M. S. Orlando, now at Bermuda, and will make his way anywhere. Remaining two at school, elder of said remaining two very bright and clever. Georgina and Mary keeping house for me; and Francis Jeffrey (I ought to have counted him as the third boy, so we'll take him in here as number two and a half) in my office at present. Now you have the family bill of fare. You ask me about Fechter and his Hamlet. formance of extraordinary merit; by far the consistent, and intelligible Hamlet I ever saw. It was a permost coherent, Some of the delicacies with which he rendered his conception clear were extremely subtile; and in particular he avoided that brutality towards Ophelia which, with a greater or less amount of coarseness, I have seen in all other Hamlets. As a mere tour de force, it would have been very remarkable in its disclosure of a perfectly wonderful knowledge of the force of the English language; but its merit was far beyond and above this. Foreign accent, of course, but not at all a disagreeable one. And he was so obviously safe and at ease, that you were never in pain for him as a foreigner. Add to this a perfectly picturesque and romantic "make-up," and a remorseless destruction of all conventionalities, and you have the leading virtues of the impersonation. In Othello he did not succeed. In Iago he is very good. He is an admirable artist, and far beyond any one on our stage. A real artist and a gentleman. Last Thursday I began reading again in London—a condensation of "Copperfield," and "Mr. Bob Sawyer's Party," from "Pickwick," to finish merrily. The success of "Copperfield" is astounding. It made an impression that I must not describe. I may only remark that I was half dead when I had done; and that although I had looked forward, all through the summer, when I was carefully getting it up, to its being a London sensation; and that although Macready, hearing it at Cheltenham, told me to be prepared for a great effect, it even went beyond my hopes. I read again next Thursday, and the rush for places is quite furious. Tell Townshend this with my love, if you see him before I have time to write to him; and tell him that I thought the people would never let me go away, they became so excited, and showed it so very warmly. I am trying to plan out a new book, but have not got beyond trying. Yours affectionately. CCCCLIII. WALTER THORNBURY OFFICE OF "ALL THE YEAR ROUND," MY DEAR THORNBURY, The Bow Street runners ceased out of the land soon after the introduction of the new police. I remember them very well as standing about the door of the office in Bow Street. They had no other uniform than a blue dress-coat, brass buttons (I am not even now sure that that was |