he cast of the
play that I should act her instead of Louisa. And when one can have
such a specimen of a queen as we had to-night, it would be a
thousand pities the audience should be put off with my inferior
views of royalty. Such bouncing, frowning, growling, and snarling
might have challenged a whole zoological garden full of wild beasts
to surpass. It's a comfort to see that it is possible to play that
part worse than I did.

_Friday, 20th._--Went to rehearsal.... Received a letter from
Lizzie, giving me an account of my dear old Newhaven fish-wife,
poor body! to whom I had sent a farewell present by her. I received
also a long copy of anonymous verses, in which I was rather
pathetically remonstrated with for seeking fame and fortune out of
my own country. The author is slightly mistaken; neither the love
of money nor notoriety would carry me away from England, but the
love of my father constrains me.... The American Consul and Mr.
Arnold called. After dinner I read Combe's "Constitution of Man,"
which interested me very much, though it fails to convince me that
phrenology can alone bestow this insight into human nature. At the
theater "The School for Scandal;" I played pretty well, though the
actors were all dreadfully imperfect, and some of them so nervous
and quick, and some so nervous and slow, that it was hardly
possible to keep pace with them.

_Saturday, 21st._--From Liverpool to Manchester. After all, this
Liverpool, with all its important wealth and industry, is a
dismal-looking place, a swarming world of dingy red houses and
dirty streets.... How well I remember the opening of this
railway!... They have placed a marble tablet in the side of the
road to commemorate the spot where poor Huskisson fell; I
remembered it by the pools of dark-green water that, as we passed
them then, made a dismal impression on me; they looked like stony
basins of verdigris. How glad I was to see Chatmoss--that
villainous, treacherous, ugly, useless bog--trenched and ditched in
process of draining and reclaiming, with the fair, holy, healthy
grain waving in bright green patches over the brown peaty soil!
Next to moral conversion, and the reclaiming to their noble uses
the perverted powers of human nature, there is nothing does one's
heart so much