upon a dark gray sea, with a keen north-east wind
blowing it in shore. It is more like late autumn than midsummer, and
there is a howling in the air as if the latter were in a very hopeless
state indeed. The very Banshee of Midsummer is rattling the windows
drearily while I write. There are no visitors in the place but children,
and they (my own included) have all got the hooping-cough, and go about
the beach choking incessantly. A miserable wanderer lectured in a
library last night about astronomy; but being in utter solitude he
snuffed out the transparent planets he had brought with him in a box and
fled in disgust. A white mouse and a little tinkling box of music that
stops at "come," in the melody of the Buffalo Gals, and can't play "out
to-night," are the only amusements left.

I beg from my solitude to send my love to Lady Blessington, and your
sister, and Count D'Orsay. I think of taming spiders, as Baron Trenck
did. There is one in my cell (with a speckled body and twenty-two very
decided knees) who seems to know me.

Dear Miss Power,
Faithfully yours ever.

[Sidenote: Mr. H. P. Smith.]

BROADSTAIRS, _July 9th, 1847._

MY DEAR SMITH,

I am really more obliged to you for your kindness about "The Eagle" (as
I always call your house) than I can say. But when I come to town
to-morrow week, for the Liverpool and Manchester plays, I shall have
Kate and Georgy with me. Moreover I shall be continually going out and
coming in at unholy hours. Item, the timid will come at impossible
seasons to "go over" their parts with the manager. Item, two Jews with
musty sacks of dresses will be constantly coming backwards and forwards.
Item, sounds as of "groans" will be heard while the inimitable Boz is
"getting" his words--which happens all day. Item, Forster will
incessantly deliver an address by Bulwer. Item, one hundred letters per
diem will arrive from Manchester and Liverpool; and five actresses, in
very limp bonnets, with extraordinary veils attached to them, will be
always calling, protected by five mothers.

No, no, my actuary. Some congenial tavern is the fitting scene for these
things, if I don't get into Devonshire Terrace, whereof I have some
spark of hope. Eagles couldn't look the sun in the face and have such
enormities going on in their nests.

I am, for the time, that obscene thing, i