lock of
my hair; you will be surprised at the lightness of the shade--at
least, I was. It was cut from my forehead, and I think it is a nice
bit; tell me that you get it safe.

Henry is staying in Buckinghamshire in all the ecstasy of a young
cockney's first sporting days. When he was quite a child and was
asked what profession he intended to embrace, he replied that he
would be "_a gentleman and wear leather breeches_," and I think
it is the very destiny he is fitted to fill. He is the perfect
picture of happiness when in his shooting-jacket and gaiters, with
his gun on his shoulder and a bright day before him; and although
we were obliged to return to town, my mother was unwilling to
curtail his pleasure, and left him to murder pheasants and hares,
and amuse himself in a manly fashion.

I did not like the place at which they were staying as much as they
did, for though the country was very pretty, I had during the
summer tour seen so much that surpassed it that I saw it at a
disadvantage. Then, I have no fancy for gypsying, and the greatest
taste for all the formal proprieties of life, and what I should
call "silver fork existence" in general; and the inconveniences of
a small country inn, without really affecting my comfort, disturb
my decided preference for luxury. The principal diversion my
ingenious mind discovered to while away my time with was a _fiddle_
(an elderly one), which I routed out of a lumber closet, and from
which, after due invocations to St. Cecilia, I drew such diabolical
sounds as I flatter myself were never excelled by Tartini or his
master, the devil himself. I must now close this, for it is
tea-time.

The play of "The Jew of Aragon," the first dramatic composition of a
young gentleman of the name of Wade, of whose talent my father had a
very high opinion, which he trusted the success of his piece would
confirm, I am sorry to say failed entirely. It was the first time and
the last that I had the distress of assisting in damning a piece, and
what with my usual intense nervousness in acting a new part, my anxiety
for the interests of both the author and the theatre, and the sort of
indignant terror with which, instead of the applause I was accustomed
to, I heard the hisses which testified the distaste and disapprobation
of the public and the failure of the play,