lack Crook" and the
"White Fawn," in majesty, from an arm-chair in the first entrance, P.S.,
more than once. Of these astonishing dramas, I beg to report (seriously)
that I have found no human creature "behind" who has the slightest idea
what they are about (upon my honour, my dearest Macready!), and that
having some amiable small talk with a neat little Spanish woman, who is
the _premiere danseuse_, I asked her, in joke, to let me measure her
skirt with my dress glove. Holding the glove by the tip of the
forefinger, I found the skirt to be just three gloves long, and yet its
length was much in excess of the skirts of two hundred other ladies,
whom the carpenters were at that moment getting into their places for a
transformation scene, on revolving columns, on wires and "travellers" in
iron cradles, up in the flies, down in the cellars, on every description
of float that Wilmot, gone distracted, could imagine!

I have taken my passage for Liverpool from New York in the Cunarder
_Russia_, on the 22nd of April. I had the second officer's cabin on deck
coming out, and I have the chief steward's cabin on deck going home,
because it will be on the sunny side of the ship. I have experienced
nothing here but good humour and cordiality. In the autumn and winter I
have arranged with Chappells to take my farewell of reading in the
United Kingdom for ever and ever.

I am delighted to hear of Benvenuta's marriage, and I think her husband
a very lucky man. Johnnie has my profound sympathy under his
examinatorial woes. The noble boy will give me Gavazzi revised and
enlarged, I expect, when I next come to Cheltenham. I will give you and
Mrs. Macready all my American experiences when you come to London, or,
better still, to Gad's. Meanwhile I send my hearty love to all, not
forgetting dear Katie.

Niagara is not at all spoiled by a very dizzy-looking suspension bridge.
Is to have another still nearer to the Horse-shoe opened in July. My
last sight of that scene (last Sunday) was thus: We went up to the
rapids above the Horse-shoe--say two miles from it--and through the
great cloud of spray. Everything in the magnificent valley--buildings,
forest, high banks, air, water, everything--was _made of rainbow_.
Turner's most imaginative drawing in his finest day has nothing in it so
ethereal, so gorgeous in fancy, so celestial. We said to one another
(Dolby and I), "Let it for evermore remain so," and shut our eyes and
came away.

God bl