ing of any very eminent actress
joining in that worthy enterprise; but Miss Smithson, a young lady with
a figure and face of Hibernian beauty, whose superfluous native accent
was no drawback to her merits in the esteem of her French audience,
represented to them the heroines of the English tragic drama; the
incidents of which, infinitely more startling than any they were used
to, invested their fair victim with an amazing power over her foreign
critics, and she received from them, in consequence, a rather
disproportionate share of admiration--due, perhaps, more to the
astonishing circumstances in which she appeared before them than to the
excellence of her acting under them.

One of the most enthusiastic admirers of the English representations
said to my father, "Ah! parlez moi d'Othello! voila, voila la passion,
la tragedie. Dieu! que j'aime cette piece! il y a tant de
_remue-menage_."

A few rash and superficial criticisms were hardly to be avoided; but in
general, my father has often said, in spite of the difficulty of the
foreign language, and the strangeness of the foreign form of thought and
feeling and combination of incident, his Parisian audience never
appeared to him to miss the finer touches or more delicate and refined
shades of his acting; and in this respect he thought them superior to
his own countrymen. Lamartine and Victor Hugo had already proclaimed the
enfranchisement of French poetical thought from the rigid rule of
classical authority; and all the enthusiastic believers in the future
glories of the "Muse Romantique" went to the English theater, to be
amazed, if not daunted, by the breadth of horizon and height of empyrean
which her wings might sweep, and into which she might soar, "puisque
Shakespeare l'a bien ose."

ST. JAMES STREET, BUCKINGHAM GATE, October 11, 1827,
MY DEAREST H----,

I do not think you would have been surprised at my delay in
answering your last, when I told you that on arriving here I found
that all my goods and chattels had been (according to my own
desire) only removed hither, and that their arrangement and
bestowal still remained to be effected by myself; and when I tell
you that I have settled all these matters, and moreover _finished
my play_, I think you will excuse my not having answered you
sooner. Last Monday, having in the morning achieved the termination
of the fourth act, and finding that my fa