rie Stuart," and cried her eyes almost out, so she
must have some pathetic power. ---- was so enchanted with her, both on
and off the stage, that he took me to call upon her, on her arrival in
London, and I was very much pleased with the quiet grace and dignity,
the excellent _bon ton_ of her manners and deportment. The other morning
too, at Stafford House, I was extremely overcome at my sister's first
public exhibition in England, and was endeavoring, while I screened
myself behind a pillar, to hide my emotion and talk with some composure
to Rachel; she saw, however, how it was with me, and with great kindness
allowed me to go into a room that had been appropriated to her use
between her declamations, and was very amiable and courteous to me.

She is completely the rage in London now; all the fine ladies and
gentlemen crazy after her, the Queen throwing her roses on the stage out
of her own bouquet, and viscountesses and marchionesses driving her
about, _a l'envie l'une de l'autre_, to show her all the lions of the
town. She is miserably supported on the stage, poor thing, the _corps
dramatique_ engaged to act with her being not only bad, but some of them
(the principal hero, principally) irresistibly ludicrous.

By-the-by, I was assured, by a man who went to see the "Marie Stuart,"
that this worthy, who enacted the part of Leicester, carried his public
familiarity with Queen Elizabeth to such lengths as to nudge her with
his elbow on some particular occasion. Don't you think that was nice?

Mrs. Grote and I have had sundry small encounters, and I think I
perceive that, had I leisure to cultivate her acquaintance more
thoroughly, I should like her very much. The other evening, at her own
house, she nearly killed me with laughing, by assuring me that she had
always had a perfect passion for dancing, and that she had entirely
missed her vocation, which ought to have been that of an opera-dancer;
(now, Harriet, she looks like nothing but Trelawney in petticoats.) I
suppose this is the secret of her great delight in Ellsler.

I find, in an old letter of yours that I was reading over this morning,
this short question: "Does imagination make a fair balance, in
heightening our pains and our pleasures?" That would depend, I suppose,
upon whether we had as many pleasures as pains (real ones, I mean) to be
colored by it; but as the mere possession of an imaginative temperament
is in itself a more fertile source of unreal pains