f Sir Samuel Romilly are none
to me. I have known those who knew him intimately. My brother was school
and college mate of his sons, one of whom I know very well; and their
father's character, in all its most endearing aspects, was familiar to
me. I think I was once told (not by them, however, of course) that the
melancholy induced by the loss of his wife had been the chief cause of
his destroying himself, for he was devotedly and passionately attached
to her.

We go every night to see Fanny Ellsler; only think what an extraordinary
effort of dissipation for me, who hardly ever stir abroad of an evening,
and who had almost as much forgotten the inside of a theatre as Falstaff
had the inside of a church! My admiration for her grows rather than
diminishes, though she is a better actress even than dancer, which I
think speaks in favor of her intellect. Did you ever see Taglioni? Who
invented and who suggested the expression the "poetry of motion"? It
should have been _made_ for her. Her dancing is like nothing but poetic
inspiration, and seems as if she was composing while she executed it. I
wonder if it is the ballet-master who devises all the steps of these
great dancers,--of course, not the national dances, but the
inconceivably lovely things that Taglioni does, or whether she orders
her own steps, and (given a certain dramatic situation and a certain
strain of music) floats or flies, or glides, or gyrates at her own will
and pleasure. Did you ever see her in the "Sylphide"? What an exquisite
pathetic dream of supernatural sentiment that was! Other dances are as
graceful as possible; that woman was grace itself.

I was saying once to my friend, Frederick Rackeman, that Chopin's music
made me think of Taglioni's dancing, to which he replied, to my great
surprise, that Chopin had said that he had more than once received his
inspiration from Taglioni's dancing; a curious instance of influence so
strong as to be recognized by one who was perfectly unaware of it. If I
remember rightly, Gibson, the sculptor, said that he owed many
suggestions to the vigorous and graceful dancing of Cerito; but those,
of course, were a suggestion of form to a creator of form, and not an
inspiration of exquisite sound gathered from exquisite motion, as in the
instance of Taglioni and Chopin.

Certain music suggests the waving of trees, as in the Notturno in
Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream" and Schubert's exquisite
_beckoning_ song of