I act Fazio;
Wednesday, we dine at Lady Macdonald's; Thursday, I act Mrs.
Haller; and Saturday, Beatrice again. I have not an idea what will
be done for my benefit; we are all devising and proposing. I myself
want them to bring out Massinger's "Maid of Honor;" I think it
beautiful.

Now, dear H----, I must leave off, and sign my tickets. We all send
our loves to you: my mother tells me not to let you forget her; she
says she is afraid you class her with Mrs. John Kemble. If ever
there were two dissimilar human beings, it is those two. Ever your
affectionate

FANNY.

GREAT RUSSELL STREET, March 13, 1831.
DEAR H----,

I received your letter yesterday, and must exult in my
self-command, for Mrs. Jameson was with me, and I did not touch it
till she was gone. Thank you first of all for Spenser; that _is_
poetry! I was much benefited as well as delighted by it.
Considering the power of poetry to raise one's mind and soul into
the noblest moods, I do not think it is held in sufficient
reverence nowadays; the bards of old were greater people in their
society than our modern ones are; to be sure, modern poetry is not
all of a purely elevating character, and poets are _paid_, besides
being asked out to dinner, which the bards always were. I think the
tone of a good deal of Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope" very noble,
and some of Mrs. Hemans's things are very beautiful in sentiment as
well as expression. But then, all that order of writing is so
feeble compared with the poetry of our old masters, who do not so
much appeal to our feelings as to our reason and imagination
combined. I do not believe that to be sublime is in the power of a
woman, any more than to be logical; and Mrs. Hemans, who is
neither, writes charmingly, and one loves her as a Christian woman
even more than one admires her as a writer.

Yes, it is very charming that the dove, the favorite type of
gentleness and tenderness and "harmlessness," should have such a
swift and vigorous power of flight; _suaviter--fortiter_, a good
combination.

We are having the most tempestuous weather; A---- is horribly
frightened, and I am rather awed. I got the encyclopaedia to-night
to study the c