tle broken bits of splendor and sumptuousness,
and thank Heaven that their number and gradations are infinite,
from the rainbow that the sun spans the heavens with, to the fine,
small jewel drawn from the bowels of the earth to glitter on a
lady's neck....

My dearest H----, I wish I were with you with all my heart, but, as
if to diminish my regret by putting the thing still further beyond
the region of possibility, I act next Monday the 17th, instead of
the 24th. (They say "a miss is as good as a mile;" why does it
always seem so much worse, then?) I begin with Belvidera, and have
already begun my cares and woes and tribulations about lilac satins
and silver tissues, etc., etc. Young is engaged with us, and plays
Pierre, and my father Giaffir, which will be very dreadful for me;
I do not know how I shall be able to bear all his wretchedness as
well as my own. To be a good politician one ought to have, as it
were, only one eye for truth; I do not at all mean to be
single-eyed in the good sense of the word, but to be incapable of
seeing more than one side of every question: one sees a part so
much more strongly when one does not see the whole of a matter, and
though a statesman may need a hundred eyes, I maintain that a party
politician is the better for having only one. Restricted vision is
good for work, too; people who see far and wide can seldom be very
hopeful, I should think, and hope is the very essence of working
courage. The matter in hand should always, if possible, be the
great matter to those who have to carry it through, and though
broad brains may be the best for conceiving, narrow ones are,
perhaps, the best for working with.

Thank you for your quotation from Sir Humphry Davy; it did me good,
and even made me better for five minutes; and your Irish letter,
which interested me extremely. "Walking the world." What a sad and
touching expression; and how well it describes a broken and
desponding spirit! And yet what else are we all doing, in soul if
not in body? Is not that solitary, wandering feeling the very
essence of our existence here?

You ask if the interests of the theater and mine are not identical?
No, I think not. The management seems to me like our Governments
for some time past, to be actuated by mere considerations o