amazing
power of passion it is impossible to reason, analyze, or do
anything but surrender one's self to his forcible appeals to one's
emotions. He entirely divested Shylock of all poetry or elevation,
but invested it with a concentrated ferocity that made one's blood
curdle. He seemed to me to combine the supernatural malice of a
fiend with the base reality of the meanest humanity. His passion is
prosaic, but all the more intensely terrible for that very reason.
I am to see him to-morrow in "Richard III.," and, though I never
saw the play before, am afraid I shall be disappointed, because
Richard III. is a Plantagenet Prince, and should be a royal
villain, and I am afraid Mr. Kean will not have the innate
_majesty_ which I think belongs to the part; however, we shall see,
and when next I write I will tell you how it impressed me.

You deserve that I should bestow all my tediousness upon you, for
loving me as well as you do. Mrs. Harry Siddons and her daughter
are here for two or three days, on their return from their tour
through Switzerland. Mrs. Harry is all that is excellent, though
she does not strike me as particularly clever; and Lizzy is a very
pretty, very good, very sweet, very amiable girl. Her brother, my
cousin, the midshipman, is here too, having come up from Portsmouth
to meet his mother and sister, so that the house is full. Think of
that happy girl having travelled all through Switzerland, seen the
Jungfrau--Manfred's mountain--been in two violent storms at night
on the lakes, and telling me placidly that "she liked it all very
well." Oh dear, oh dear! how queerly Heaven does distribute
privileges! Good-by, dear.

Yours ever,
FANNY.

16 ST. JAMES STREET, BUCKINGHAM GATE, December, 1827.
MY DEAREST H----,

My heart is full of joy, and I write that you may rejoice with me;
our dear John has distinguished himself greatly, but lest my words
should seem sisterly and exaggerated, I will repeat what Mr.
Peacock, his tutor, wrote to my father: "He has covered himself
with glory. Such an oration as his has not been heard for many
years in Cambridge, and it was as tastefully and modestly delivered
as it was well written." This has