ally in hand, I am not
certain of the number in which it will appear, but Georgy shall write on
Monday and tell you. We are always a fortnight in advance of the public
or the mechanical work could not be done. I think there are many things
in it that are _very pretty_. The Katie part is particularly well done.
If I don't say more, it is because I have a heavy sense, in all cases,
of the responsibility of encouraging anyone to enter on that thorny
track, where the prizes are so few and the blanks so many; where----

But I won't write you a sermon. With the fire going out, and the first
shadows of a new story hovering in a ghostly way about me (as they
usually begin to do, when I have finished an old one), I am in danger of
doing the heavy business, and becoming a heavy guardian, or something of
that sort, instead of the light and airy Joe.

So good-night, and believe that you may always trust me, and never find
a grim expression (towards you) in any that I wear.

Ever yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. David Roberts, R.A.]

_February 21st, 1851._

Oh my dear Roberts, if you knew the trouble we have had and the money we
pay for Drury Lane for one night for the benefit, you would never dream
of it for the dinner. _There isn't possibility of getting a theatre._

I will do all I can for your charming little daughter, and hope to
squeeze in half-a-dozen ladies at the last; but we must not breathe the
idea or we shall not dare to execute it, there will be such an outcry.

Faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. W. C. Macready.]

DEVONSHIRE TERRACE, _February 27th, 1851._

MY DEAR MACREADY,

Forster told me to-day that you wish Tennyson's sonnet to be read after
your health is given on Saturday. I am perfectly certain that it would
not do at that time. I am quite convinced that the audience would not
receive it, under these exciting circumstances, as it ought to be
received. If I had to read it, I would on no account undertake to do so
at that period, in a great room crowded with a dense company. I have an
instinctive assurance that it would fail. Being with Bulwer this
morning, I communicated your wish to him, and he immediately felt as I
do. I could enter into many reasons which induce me to form this
opinion. But I believe that you have that