cters of Master Walter and
Julia, the great scope for good acting in all the scenes in which they
appear, the natural fire, passion, and pathos of the dialogue, in short
the great merits of the piece as an acting play cover all its defects;
even the heroine's vulgar, flighty folly and the hero's absurd
eccentricity interfering wonderfully little with the sympathy of the
audience for their troubles and their final triumph over them. "The
Hunchback" is a very satisfactory play to _see_, but let nobody who has
seen it well acted attempt to read it in cold blood!

It had an immense run, and afforded me an opportunity of testing the
difference between an infinite repetition of the text of Shakespeare and
that of any other writer. I played Juliet upward of a hundred nights
without any change of part and did not weary of it; Julia, in "The
Hunchback," after half the repetition became so tiresome to me that I
would have given anything to have changed parts with my sprightly Helen,
if only for a night, to refresh myself and recover a little from the
extreme weariness I felt in constantly repeating Julia. The audience
certainly would have suffered by the exchange, for Miss Taylor would not
have played my part so much better than I, as I should have played hers
worse than she did. Indeed, her performance of the character of Helen
saved it from the reproach of coarseness, which very few actresses would
have been able to avoid while giving it all the point and lively humor
which she threw into it. I had great pleasure in acting the piece with
her, she did her business so thoroughly well and was so amiable and
agreeable a fellow-worker.

In my last letter to Miss S---- I have spoken of a party at the Countess
of Cork's, to which I went. She was one of the most curious figures in
the London society of my girlish days. Very aged, yet retaining much of
a vivacity of spirit and sprightly wit for which she had been famous as
Mary Monckton, she continued till between ninety and a hundred years old
to entertain her friends and the gay world, who frequently during the
season assembled at her house.

I have still a note begging me to come to one of her evening parties,
written under her dictation by a young person who used to live with her,
and whom she called her "Memory;" the few concluding lines scrawled by
herself are signed "_M. Cork, aet_. 92." She was rather apt to appeal to
her friends to come to her on the score of her age; and I r