fame and fortune.

EASTLANDS COTTAGE, WEYBRIDGE, ----, 1827.
MY DEAR H----:

I wrote to you immediately upon our arriving here, which is now
nearly a month ago, but having received no answer, and not having
heard from you for some time, I conjecture that our charming
post-office has done as it did last year, and kept my letters to
itself. I therefore take the opportunity, which my brother's
departure for town to-morrow gives me, of writing to you and having
my letter posted in London. John's going to town is an extreme loss
to me, for here we are more thrown together and companionable than
we can be in London. His intellectual occupations and interests
engross him very much, and though always very interesting to me,
are seldom discussed with or communicated to me as freely there as
they are here--I suppose for want of better fellowship. I have
latterly, also, summoned up courage enough to request him to walk
with me; and to my some surprise and great satisfaction, instead of
the "I can't, I am really so busy," he has acquiesced, and we have
had one or two very pleasant long strolls together. He is certainly
a very uncommon person, and I admire, perhaps too enthusiastically,
his great abilities.

My father is in Paris, where he was to arrive yesterday, and where
to-morrow he will act in the first regularly and decently organized
English theater that the French ever saw. He is very nervous, and
we, as you may easily conceive, very anxious about it; when next I
write to you I will let you know all that we hear of the result. I
must repeat some part of my last letter, in case you did not
receive it. We have taken a house in James Street, Buckingham Gate,
Westminster, which appears to be in every way a desirable and
convenient abode; in itself it is comfortable and cheerful, and its
nearness to Henry's school and comparative nearness to the theatre,
together with its view over the park, and (though last, not least)
its moderate rent, make up a mass of combined advantages which few
other situations that we could afford can present.

I am extremely busy, dearest H----, and extremely elated about my
play; I know I mentioned it before to you, but you may have
reckoned it as one of the soap-bubbles which I am so fond of