r for the worse if you left the stage; for,
after all, it is mere frivolous fashionable popularity." I ought to
have got up and made her a courtesy for that. So that it seems I
have fortune and fame (such as it is)--positive real advantages,
which I cannot give with myself, and which I cease to own when I
give myself away, which certainly makes my marrying any one or any
one marrying me rather a solemn consideration; for I lose
everything, and my marryee gains nothing in a worldly point of
view--says she--and it's incontrovertible and not pleasant. So I
took up Dante, and read about devils boiled in pitch, which
refreshed my imagination and cheered my spirits very much.

[How far my ingenious mind was from foreseeing the days when men of high
rank and social station would marry singers, dancers, and actresses, and
be condescending enough to let their wives continue to earn their bread
by public exhibition, and even to appropriate the proceeds of their
theatrical labors! I have not yet made up my mind whether, in these
cases, the _gentleman_ ought not to take his wife's name in private, as
a compensation for her not taking his in public. Poor Miss Paton's noble
husband was the only Englishman, that I know of, who committed that act
of self-effacement. To go much further back in dramatic and social
history, the old, accomplished, mad Earl of Peterborough married the
famous singer Anastasia Robinson, and refused to acknowledge the fact
till her death. To be sure, this was a more cowardly, but a less dirty
meanness. He withheld his name from her, but did not take her money.]

It is settled now that we go to Exeter by coach, and now that we
have given up our pretty sea trip to Ilfracombe, the weather has
become lovely--perverse creature!--but I am glad we are going away
in every way.

_Saturday, Bristol, July 23d._ ... We started at eight, and taking
the whole coach to ourselves as we do, I think traveling by a
public conveyance the best mode of getting over the road. They run
so rapidly; there is so little time lost, and so much trouble with
one's luggage saved. The morning was gray and soft and promised a
fine day, but broke its promise at the end of our second stage, and
began to pelt with rain, which it continued to do the live-long
blessed day. We could see, however, that the country we were
passing throu