Manning, your letter, dated Hottentots, August the what-was-it? came to hand.  I can scarce hope that mine will have the same luck.  China, Canton,—­bless us, how it strains the imagination and makes it ache!  I write under another uncertainty whether it can go to-morrow by a ship which I have just learned is going off direct to your part of the world, or whether the despatches may not be sealed up and this have to wait; for if it is detained here, it will grow staler in a fortnight than in a five months’ voyage coming to you.  It will be a point of conscience to send you none but bran-new news (the latest edition), which will but grow the better, like oranges, for a sea-voyage.  Oh that you should be so many hemispheres off!—­if I speak incorrectly, you can correct me.  Why, the simplest death or marriage that takes place here must be important to you as news in the old Bastile.  There’s your friend Tuthill has got away from France—­you remember France? and Tuthill?—­ten to one but he writes by this post, if he don’t get my note in time, apprising him of the vessel sailing.  Know, then, that he has found means to obtain leave from Bonaparte, without making use of any incredible romantic pretences, as some have done, who never meant to fulfil them, to come home; and I have seen him here and at Holcroft’s.  An’t you glad about Tuthill?  Now then be sorry for Holcroft, whose new play, called “The Vindictive Man,” was damned about a fortnight since.  It died in part of its own weakness, and in part for being choked up with bad actors.  The two principal parts were destined to Mrs. Jordan and Mr. Bannister; but Mrs. J. has not come to terms with the managers,—­they have had some squabble,—­and Bannister shot some of his fingers off by the going off of a gun.  So Miss Duncan had her part, and Mr. De Camp took his.  His part, the principal comic hope of the play, was most unluckily Goldfinch, taken out of the “Road to Ruin,”—­not only the same character, but the identical Goldfinch; the same as Falstaff is in two plays of Shakspeare.  As the devil of ill-luck would have it, half the audience did not know that H. had written it, but were displeased at his stealing from the “Road to Ruin;” and those who might have home a gentlemanly coxcomb with his “That’s your sort,” “Go it,”—­such as Lewis is,—­did not relish the intolerable vulgarity and inanity of the idea stripped of his manner.  De Camp was hooted, more than hissed,—­hooted and bellowed off the stage before the second act was finished; so that the remainder of his part was forced to be, with some violence to the play, omitted.  In addition to this, a strumpet was another principal character,—­a most unfortunate choice in this moral day.  The audience were as scandalized as if you were to introduce such a personage to their private tea-tables.  Besides, her action in the play was gross,—­wheedling an old man into marriage.  But the mortal blunder of the play was that which, oddly enough, H. took pride in, and