make-believe miserable. The house was very good, and I played
fairly well.

_Tuesday, 17th._--Went to my mother's room before she was down,
with Henry. It is her birthday, and I carried her the black velvet
dress I have got for her, with which she seemed much pleased. Went
to rehearsal at twelve. Lord and Lady Francis were there, and we
acted the whole play, of course, to please them, so that I was half
dead at the end of the rehearsal. They want us to go to Lady
Charlotte's (Greville) to-morrow. My father said we would if we
were all well and _in spirits_ (_i.e._, if the play was not
damped).... I wonder how my dear old Newhaven fish-wife does. "Eh!
gude gracious, ma'am, it's yer ain sel come back again!" Poor body!
I believe I love the very east wind that blows over the streets of
Edinburgh.... After dinner Mrs. Jameson's beautiful toy-likeness of
me helped off the time delightfully till the gentlemen came up, and
then helped it off delightfully till everybody went away. What a
misfortune it is to have a broken nose, like poor dear Thackeray!
He would have been positively handsome, and is positively ugly in
consequence of it. John and his friend Venables broke the bridge of
Thackeray's nose when they were schoolboys playing together. What a
mishap to befall a young lad just beginning life! [I suppose my
friend Thackeray's injury was one that did not admit a surgical
remedy, but my father, late in life, fell down while skating, and
broke the bridge of his nose, and Liston, the eminent surgeon,
urged him extremely to let him raise it--"build it again," as he
used to say. My father, however, declined the operation, and not
only remained with his handsome nose disfigured, but suffered a
much greater inconvenience, which Liston had predicted--very
aggravated deafness in old age, from the stopping of the passages
in the nose, which helped to transmit sound to the brain.] After
all, I suppose, it does not much signify to a man whether he is
ugly or not. Wilkes, who was pre-eminently so, but brilliantly
agreeable, used always to say that he was only half an hour
behindhand with the handsomest man in England.

_Wednesday, 18th._--Went to the theater to rehearse "Katharine of
Cleves;" we were kept at it till half-past two. Drove home through
the