lly, and know so
well that it would certainly be mine if I were in their case (as,
indeed, it is, being their friend), that I comply with their request
for an introduction. And I will not ask you to excuse my troubling you,
feeling sure that I may use this liberty with you.

Believe me always, very faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Countess of Blessington.]

48, RUE DE COURCELLES, PARIS, _January 24th, 1847._

MY DEAR LADY BLESSINGTON,

I feel very wicked in beginning this note, and deeply remorseful for not
having begun and ended it long ago. But _you_ know how difficult it is
to write letters in the midst of a writing life; and as you know too (I
hope) how earnestly and affectionately I always think of you, wherever I
am, I take heart, on a little consideration, and feel comparatively good
again.

Forster has been cramming into the space of a fortnight every
description of impossible and inconsistent occupation in the way of
sight-seeing. He has been now at Versailles, now in the prisons, now at
the opera, now at the hospitals, now at the Conservatoire, and now at
the Morgue, with a dreadful insatiability. I begin to doubt whether I
had anything to do with a book called "Dombey," or ever sat over number
five (not finished a fortnight yet) day after day, until I half began,
like the monk in poor Wilkie's story, to think it the only reality in
life, and to mistake all the realities for short-lived shadows.

Among the multitude of sights, we saw our pleasant little bud of a
friend, Rose Cheri, play Clarissa Harlowe the other night. I believe she
does it in London just now, and perhaps you may have seen it. A most
charming, intelligent, modest, affecting piece of acting it is, with a
death superior to anything I ever saw on the stage, except Macready's
Lear. The theatres are admirable just now. We saw "Gentil Bernard" at
the Varietes last night, acted in a manner that was absolutely perfect.
It was a little picture of Watteau, animated and talking from beginning
to end. At the Cirque there is a new show-piece called the "French
Revolution," in which there is a representation of the National
Convention, and a series of battles (fought by some five hundred people,
who look like five thousand) that are wonderful in their extraordinary
vigour and truth. Gun-cotton gives its name to the general annual jocose
review at the Palais Royal, which is dull enough, saving for the
i