rely wanting in the weight and dignity indispensable for the part,
and must sorely have tried the patience and forbearance of such of my
spectators as were fortunate and unfortunate enough to remember my aunt;
one of whom, her enthusiastic admirer, and my excellent friend, Mr.
Harness, said that seeing me in that dress was like looking at Mrs.
Siddons through the diminishing end of an opera-glass: I should think my
acting of the part must have borne much the same proportion to hers. I
was dressed for the trial scene in imitation of the famous picture by
Harlow, and of course must have recalled, in the most provoking and
absurd manner, the great actress whom I resembled so little and so much.
In truth, I could hardly sustain the weight of velvet and ermine in
which I was robed, and to which my small girlish figure was as little
adapted as my dramatic powers were to the matronly dignity of the
character. I cannot but think that if I might have dressed the part as
Queen Katharine really dressed herself, and been allowed to look as like
as I could to the little dark, hard-favored woman Holbein painted, it
would have been better than to challenge such a physical as well as
dramatic comparison by the imitation of my aunt's costume in the part.
Englishmen of her day will never believe that Katharine of Arragon could
have looked otherwise than Mrs. Siddons did in Shakespeare's play of
"Henry VIII.;" but nothing could in truth be more unlike the historical
woman than the tall, large, bare-armed, white-necked, Juno-eyed,
ermine-robed ideal of queenship of the English stage. That quintessence
of religious, conscientious bigotry and royal Spanish pride is given,
both in the portraits of contemporary painters and in Shakespeare's
delineation of her; the splendid magnificence of my aunt's person and
dress, as delineated in Harlow's picture, has no affinity whatever to
the real woman's figure, or costume, or character.]

GREAT RUSSELL STREET, October 12, 1831.
DEAREST H----,

I received my book and your letter very safely about a week ago,
and would have written to say so sooner, but have been much
occupied with one thing and another that has prevented me. So you
are beaten, _vieilles perukes_ that you are! not by one or two, but
by forty-one; and your bones are all the likelier to ache, and I am
not at all sorry. Think of Brougham going down on his marrow-bones
(