y inn, very pleasant to those who had never
known it as the house of former friends, and therefore did not meet
ghosts in all its rooms and garden walks; and the park was cut up into
small villa residences and rascally inclined citizen's boxes. Hatchford,
the widowed home of Lady Ellesmere and burial-place of her brother, to
whose memory she erected there an elaborate mausoleum, has passed out of
the family possessions and become the property of strangers. One son of
the house lives on St. George's Hill, and has his home where I have so
often drawn rein while riding with his father and mother to look over
the wild, wooded slopes to the smiling landscape stretching in sunny
beauty far below us.]

_Monday, May 30th._ ... The Francis Egertons called, and sat a long
time discussing "Hernani." ... I must record such a good pun of
his, which he only, alas, _dreamt_. He dreamt Lord W---- came up to
him, covered with gold chains and ornaments of all sorts, and that
he had called him the "Chain Pier." ... In the evening to
Bridgewater House. As soon as we arrived, I went to my own private
room, and looked over my part. We began at nine. Our audience was
larger than the last time. The play went off extremely well; we
were all improved. I was very anxious to play well, for the
Archbishop of York was in the front row, and he (poor gentleman!)
had never had the happiness of seeing me, the play-house being
forbidden ground to him. [This seems rather inconsistent, as all
the lesser clergy at this time frequented the theater without fear
or reproach. Dr. Hughes, the Very Reverend Prebend of St. Paul's,
Milman, Harness, among our own personal friends, were there
constantly, not to speak of my behind-the-scenes acquaintance, the
Rev. A.F.] I should like to seduce an old Archbishop into a liking
for the wickedness of my mystery, so I did my very best to edify
him, according to my kind and capacity.... At the end of the play,
as I lay dead on the stage, the king (Captain Shelley) was cutting
three great capers, like Bayard on his field of battle, for joy his
work was done, when his pretty dancing shoes attracted, in spite of
my decease, my attention, and I asked, with rapidly reviving
interest in existence, what they meant, on which I was informed
that the supper at Mrs. Cunliffe's was indeed a ball. I jumped up