admire me less and criticise me
more, I am sure, as the housemaids say, you would give more
satisfaction. However, keep your conscience by you; praise or
blame, it is none of my business. Talking of that same Juliet, I
received a letter from Hayter the other day which gave me some
pain. He tells me that he has all those sketches on his hands, and
asks me if I am inclined to take them of him. I fear his applying
to me, at such a distance, on this subject, is a sign that he is
not prosperous or doing well. He is an amiable, clever little man,
and I shall feel very sorry if my surmise proves true. My father
wishes to have the collection, and I shall write to tell him so
forthwith.

It is no slight illustration to me of the ephemeral nature of the
popularity which I enjoyed, to think that those drawings, which, as
works of art, were singularly elegant and graceful, should go
a-begging for a purchaser. Verily "all is vanity!"

[My friend, Lord Ellesmere, purchased the series of drawings Mr. Hayter
made from my performance of Juliet; and on my last visit to Lady
Ellesmere at Hatchford, she pointed them out to me round a small hall
that led to her private sitting-room, over the writing-table of which
hung a miniature of me copied from a drawing of Mrs. Jameson's by that
charming and clever woman, Miss Emily Eden.]

You will be sorry for me and for many when I tell you that our
good, dear friend Dall is dangerously ill. I am writing at this
moment by her bed.... This is the only trial of the kind I have
ever undergone; God has hitherto been pleased to spare all those
whom I love, and to grant them the enjoyment of strength and
health. This is my first lonely watching by a sick-bed, and I feel
deeply the sadness and awfulness of the office.... Now that I am
beginning to know what care and sorrow really are, I look back upon
my past life and see what reason I have to be thankful for the few
and light trials with which I have been visited. My poor dear
aunt's illness is giving us a professional respite, for which my
faculties, physical and mental, are very grateful. They needed it
sorely; I was almost worn out with work, and latterly with anxiety
and bitter distress.

We terminated our last engagement here on Friday last, when the
phlegmatic Bostonians seemed almost beside t