wonderful tight-rope dancing by an exceedingly steady,
graceful man; but it turned me perfectly sick, and I hate all those
sort of things.

_Thursday, 29th._--After dinner worked at "The Star of Seville." I
really wonder I have the patience to go on with it, it is such
heavy trash. After tea my father begged me to sing to him. I am
always horribly frightened at singing before my mother; I cannot
bear to distress her accurate ear with my unsteady intonation, and
the more I think of it, the colder my hands grow and the hotter my
face, the huskier my voice and the flatter my notes; I bungle over
accompaniments that I have at my fingers' ends, and forget words I
know as well as my alphabet; in short, I feel like a wretch, and I
sing like a wretch, and I make wretched all my hearers. My mother's
own nervous terror when she had to sing on the stage, as a young
woman, was excessive, as she has often told me; and her mother
repeatedly but vainly endeavored to bribe her with the promise of a
guinea if she would sing as well in public any of the songs that
she sang perfectly well at home. I sang for some time, and by
degrees got more courage, till at last I managed to sing tolerably
in tune. My mother says I have more voice than A----. I am sorry to
hear her voice has grown thin--that sweet, melodious voice I did so
love to listen to; but perhaps it will recover its tone.

_Wednesday, 28th._--My dear, dear father came down to breakfast,
looking horribly thin and pale, poor fellow! but, thank God, he was
able to come once more among us. I am to act Euphrasia on Monday;
how I do hate it! Monday week my father talks of resuming his work
again with Mercutio. Dear me! how happy I shall be! once more
speaking the love poetry of Juliet after all these "meaner beauties
of the night" that I have been executing ever since he has been
ill. Juliet did very right to die; she would have become Bianca
when once she was Mrs. Romeo Montague.... I wrote to Lady Francis
about "Katharine of Cleves," (Lord Francis's translation of "Henri
Trois"), who is once more beginning to lift up her head. My father
thinks it may be done on Wednesday week.... It is now determined
that Henry should go into the army, and my mother wants me to
besiege Sir John through Lady Macdonald (the genera