ank you, my dearest H----, for your last delightful letter, which
I should have answered before, but for the production of a new
piece at Covent Garden, which has taken up all my time for the last
week in rehearsals, and trying on dresses and the innumerable and
invariable etceteras of a new play and part. It has been highly
successful, and I think is likely to bring money to our treasury,
which is _the_ consummation most devoutly to be wished. It is
nothing more than an interesting melodrama, with the advantage of
being written in gentlemanly (noblemanly?) blank verse instead of
turgid prose, and being acted by the principal instead of the
secondary members of the company. This will suffice to make you
appreciate my satisfaction, when I am complimented upon my acting
in it, and you will sympathize with the shout of laughter my father
and myself indulged in in the park the other day, when Lord John
Russell, who was riding with us, told us that a young lady of his
acquaintance had assured him that "Katharine of Cleves" (the name
of the piece) was vastly more interesting than any thing
Shakespeare had ever written.

The report is that there is to be no new creation of peers, and
that the Bill will not pass. Certainly poor Lord John looks worried
to death. He and Lord Grey have almost the whole weight and
responsibility of this most momentous question upon their
shoulders, and it must be no trifle to carry. As for the judicious
young lady's judgment about "Katharine of Cleves," it is just this
sort of thing that makes me _rub the hands of my mind_ with
satisfaction that I have never cared for my profession as my family
has done. I think if I had, such folly, or rather stupidity, would
have exasperated me too much. Besides, I should have been much less
useful to the theater, for I should have lived in an everlasting
wrangle with authors, actors, and managers on behalf of the
mythological bodies supposed to preside over tragedy and comedy,
and I should have killed myself (or perhaps been killed), and that
quickly, with ineffectual protests against half the performances
before the lamps, which are enough to make the angels weep and
laugh--in short, go into hysterics, if they ever come to the
play....

Do you know you have almost increased my very s