our mind completely.

The Duke has read the play. He asked for it a week ago, and had it. He
has been at Brighton since. He called here before eleven on Saturday
morning, but I was out on the play business, so I went to him at
Devonshire House yesterday. He almost knows the play by heart. He is
supremely delighted with it, and critically understands it. In proof of
the latter part of this sentence I may mention that he had made two or
three memoranda of trivial doubtful points, _every one of which had
attracted our attention in rehearsal_, as I found when he showed them to
me. He thoroughly understands and appreciates the comedy of the
Duke--threw himself back in his chair and laughed, as I say of Walpole,
"till I thought he'd have choked," about his first Duchess, who was a
Percy. He suggested that he shouldn't say: "You know how to speak to the
heart of a Noble," because it was not likely that he would call himself
a Noble. He thought we might close up the Porter and Softhead a little
more (already done) and was so charmed and delighted to recall the
comedy that he was more pleased than any boy you ever saw when I
repeated two or three of the speeches in my part for him. He is coming
to the rehearsal to-day (we rehearse now at Devonshire House, three days
a-week, all day long), and, since he read the play, has conceived a most
magnificent and noble improvement in the Devonshire House plan, by
which, I daresay, we shall get another thousand or fifteen hundred
pounds. There is not a grain of distrust or doubt in him. I am perfectly
certain that he would confide to me, and does confide to me, his whole
mind on the subject.

More than this, the Duke comes out the best man in the play. I am happy
to report to you that Stone does the honourable manly side of that
pride inexpressibly better than I should have supposed possible in him.
The scene where he makes that reparation to the slandered woman is
_certain_ to be an effect. He is _not_ a jest upon the order of Dukes,
but a great tribute to them. I have sat looking at the play (as you may
suppose) pretty often, and carefully weighing every syllable of it. I
see, in the Duke, the most estimable character in the piece. I am as
sure that I represent the audience in this as I am that I hear the words
when they are spoken before me. The first time that scene with Hardman
was seriously done, it made an effect on the company that quite
surprised and delighted me; and whenever an