-night, that's one comfort, for I
am Queen Katharine.

Farewell, believe me

Ever yours most respectfully,
FANNY.

[It was lucky for me, under the circumstances, that my notion of
Queen Katharine's relations with Cardinal Wolsey were different from
those of a lady whom I saw in the part, who at the end of the scene
where he finds her working among her women affably gave him her
hand. Katharine of Arragon would have been more likely (though not
likely) to give him her foot.]

KING STREET, Friday, 23d.
DEAR HAL,

... I had heard a very good summary of D'Israeli's speech from Lord
Dacre, the day I dined at Lady Grey's, and know why he said Cobden was
like Robespierre. Here's goodly work in Paris now! What wonderful
difficult people to teach those French are! However, their lesson will,
of course, be set them over and over again, till they've learnt it.
Henry Greville had a letter from Adelaide the day before yesterday, in
which she says that the people had risen _en masse_ at Rome, and, with
the Princes Borghese and Corsini at their head, had gone to the
Quirinal, and demanded of the pope that no ecclesiastic (himself, I
suppose, excepted) should have any office in the government, and the
pope _had consented_.

She gave a most comical account of the King of Naples, who, it seems,
during the late troubles walked up and down his room, wringing his
hands, and apostrophizing a figure of the Virgin with "Madonna mia!
Madonna mia! ma che imbroglio che m'ha fatto quel Vicario del figlio
tuo!" Isn't that funny?

In a letter posted this morning I have told you my general impression of
Macready's Macbeth. It is generally good,--better than good in
parts,--but nowhere very extraordinary. It is a fair, but not a fine,
performance of the part.

I cannot believe that he is purposely unjust to his fellow-actors: but
he is so absorbed in himself and his own effects as to be absolutely
regardless of them; which, of course, is just as bad for them, though
the _guilt_ of his selfishness must be according to its being deliberate
or unconscious.

I played the first scene in Lady Macbeth fairly well; the rest hardly
tolerably, I think. Macready's stage arrangements destroyed any possible
effect of mine in the banquet scene, and his strange demeanor disturbed
and dis