ways thought the system a bad one, for under it, if a girl's
letters are thought dull, she feels as if she had made a failure,
and if they are laughed at and passed from hand to hand with her
knowledge, the result is much worse; and in either case, what she
writes is no longer the simple expression of her thoughts and
feelings, but samples of wit, ridicule, and comic fancy which are
to be thought amusing and clever by others than those to whom they
are addressed.

You say my mother in her note to you speaks well of my acting in
Bianca. It has succeeded very well, and I think I act some of it
very well; but my chief pleasure in its success was certainly her
approbation. She is a very severe critic, and, as she censures
sharply, I am only too thankful when I escape her condemnation. I
think you will be pleased with Bianca. I was surprised when I came
to act it at finding how terribly it affected me, for I am not
naturally at all jealous, and in this play, while feigning to be
so, it seemed to me that it must be really the most horrible
suffering conceivable; I am almost sorry that I can imagine it well
enough to represent it well.

You say that we love intellect, but I do not agree with you; I do
not think intellect excites love. I do not even think that it
increases our love for those we do love, though it adds admiration
to our affection. I certainly do admire intellect immensely; mental
power, which allied to moral power, goodness, is a force to uphold
the universe.

I have forsworn all discussions about Byron; my mother and I differ
so entirely on the subject that, as I cannot adopt her view of his
character, I find it easier to be silent about my own. Perhaps her
extreme admiration of him may have thrown me into a deeper
disapprobation than I should otherwise have expressed. He has many
excuses, doubtless: the total want of early restraint, the
miserable influence of the injudicious mother who alternately
idolized and victimized him, the bitter castigation of his first
plunge into literature, and then the flattering, fawning, fulsome
adoration of his habitual associates, of course were all against
him; but, after all, one cannot respect the man who strikes colors
to the enemy as one does the one who comes conqueror out of the
confli