yself, nor from them, nor from others does it ever occur to me that
half that identity should or could be concealed. I could as soon imagine
them without their arms or their legs as without their peculiar moral
characteristics, and could no more think of them without their faults
than without their virtues.

Many were the pleasant hours, in spite of my misgivings, that I passed
with a book in my hand, mechanically pacing the gravel walks of Russell
Square. Certain readings of Shakespeare's plays, "Othello" and "Macbeth"
especially, in lonely absorption of spirit, I associate for ever with
that place. I remember, too, reading at my father's request, during
those peripatetic exercises, two plays written by Sheil for his amiable
countrywoman, Miss O'Neill, in which she won deserved laurels: "Evadne,
or the Statue," and "The Apostate." I never had the pleasure of seeing
Miss O'Neill act; but the impression left on my mind by those plays was
that her abilities must have been very great to have given them the
effect and success they had. As for me, as usual, of course my reply to
my father was a disconsolate "I am sure _I_ can do nothing with them."

My friend H---- S----, in coming to us in Russell Street, came to a
house that had been almost a home to her and her brother when they were
children, in the life of my uncle and Mrs. John Kemble, by whom they
were regarded with great affection, and whom they visited and stayed
with as if they had been young relations of their own.

My hope of learning German and drawing was frustrated by the engrossing
calls of my theatrical occupations. The first study was reserved for a
long-subsequent season, when I had recourse to it as a temporary
distraction in perplexity and sorrow, from which I endeavored to find
relief in some sustained intellectual effort; and I mastered it
sufficiently to translate without difficulty Schiller's "Mary Stuart"
and some of his minor poems.

As for drawing, that I have once or twice tried to accomplish, but the
circumstances of my unsettled and restless life have been unfavorable
for any steady effort to follow it up, and I have got no further yet
than a passionate desire to know how to draw. If (as I sometimes
imagine) in a future existence undeveloped capacities and persistent
yearnings for all kinds of good may find expansion and exercise, and not
only our moral but also our intellectual being put forth new powers and
achieve progress in new directio