were just up and newly
dressed, though they really looked as if you could have rubbed them to
rags with a touch, like saturated curl-paper.

I am sorry you have not been able to see our play, which I suppose you
won't now, for I take it you are not going on Monday, the 21st, our last
night in town? It is worth seeing, not for the getting up (which modesty
forbids me to approve), but for the little bijou it is, in the scenery,
dresses, and appointments. They are such as never can be got together
again, because such men as Stanfield, Roberts, Grieve, Haghe, Egg, and
others, never can be again combined in such a work. Everything has been
done at its best from all sorts of authorities, and it is really very
beautiful to look at.

I find I am "used up" by the Exhibition. I don't say "there is nothing
in it"--there's too much. I have only been twice; so many things
bewildered me. I have a natural horror of sights, and the fusion of so
many sights in one has not decreased it. I am not sure that I have seen
anything but the fountain and perhaps the Amazon. It is a dreadful thing
to be obliged to be false, but when anyone says, "Have you seen ----?" I
say, "Yes," because if I don't, I know he'll explain it, and I can't
bear that. ---- took all the school one day. The school was composed of
a hundred "infants," who got among the horses' legs in crossing to the
main entrance from the Kensington Gate, and came reeling out from
between the wheels of coaches undisturbed in mind. They were clinging to
horses, I am told, all over the park.

When they were collected and added up by the frantic monitors, they were
all right. They were then regaled with cake, etc., and went tottering
and staring all over the place; the greater part wetting their
forefingers and drawing a wavy pattern on every accessible object. One
infant strayed. He was not missed. Ninety and nine were taken home,
supposed to be the whole collection, but this particular infant went to
Hammersmith. He was found by the police at night, going round and round
the turnpike, which he still supposed to be a part of the Exhibition. He
had the same opinion of the police, also of Hammersmith workhouse, where
he passed the night. When his mother came for him in the morning, he
asked when it would be over? It was a great Exhibition, he said, but he
thought it long.

As I begin to have a foreboding that you will think the same of this act
of vengeance of mine, this present letter