id for the next three weeks that will be hopeless.

To add to my occupations past, present, and to come, not having
enough of acting with my professional duties in that line, I am
going to take part in some private theatricals. Lord Francis
Leveson wants to get up his version of Victor Hugo's "Hernani," at
Bridgewater House, and has begged me, as a favor, to act the
heroine; all the rest are to be amateurs. I have consented to this,
not knowing well how to refuse, yet for one or two reasons I almost
think I had better not have done so. I expect to be excessively
amused by it, but it will take up a terrible deal of my time, for I
am sure they will need rehearsals without end. I do not know at all
what our summer plans are; but I believe we shall be acting in the
provinces till September, when if all things are quiet in Paris my
father proposes going over with me and one or two members of the
Covent Garden company, and playing there for a month or so. I think
I should like that. I fancy I should like acting to a French
audience; they are people of great intellectual refinement and
discrimination, and that is a pleasant quality in an audience. I
think my father seems inclined to take A---- with us and leave her
there. A musical education can nowhere better be obtained, and
under the care of Mrs. Foster, about whom I believe I wrote to you
once a long letter, there could be no anxiety about her welfare.

I showed that part of your last letter which concerned my aunt Dall
to herself, because I knew it would please her, and so it did; and
she bids me tell you that she values your good-will and esteem
extremely, and should do still more if you did not _misbestow so
much of them on me_.

Emily Fitzhugh sent me this morning a Seal with a pretty device, in
consequence of my saying that I thought it was pleasanter to lean
upon one's friends, morally, than to be leant upon by them--an oak
with ivy clinging to it and "Chiedo sostegno" for the motto. I do
not think I shall use it to many people, though.

To-morrow Sheridan Knowles dines with us, to read a new play he has
written, in which I am to act. In the evening we go to Lady Cork's,
Sunday we have a dinner-party here, Monday I act Camiola, Tuesday
we go to Mrs. Harry's, Wednesday I act Camiola, and furthe