You see how truly I prophesied at the beginning of this letter, when I said that the hour before breakfast was perhaps the only one I should be able to command that day.  I might have said that week, for this is the first instant I have been able to call my own since then.  I rehearsed Juliet yesterday, and shall do so again to-morrow morning; the theater opens with it to-morrow night.  I have a new nurse, and I am rehearsing for her, poor woman!  She is dreadfully alarmed at taking Mrs. Davenport’s place, who certainly was a very great favorite.  I am half crazy with the number of new dresses to be got; for though, thanks to the kindness and activity of my mother, none of the trouble of devising them ever falls on me, yet the bare catalogue of silks and satins and velvets, hats and feathers and ruffs, fills me with amazement and trepidation.  I fancy I shall go through all the old parts, and then come out in a new tragedy.  I shall be most horribly frightened, but I hope I shall do well, for the sake of the poor author, who is a young man of great abilities, and to whom I wish every success.  The subject of his play is taken from a Spanish one, called “The Jew of Aragon,” and the whole piece is of a new and unhackneyed order.  My father and I play a Jewish father and daughter; this and the novelty of the story itself will perhaps be favorable to the play; I hope so with all my heart.

Mrs. Henry Siddons has taken a house in London for six months; I have not seen her yet, but am most anxious to do so.  Anxiety and annoyance, I fear, have just caused her a severe indisposition, but she is a little better now.  Mrs. Siddons is much better.  She is staying at Leamington at present.

Dearest H——­, returning from Buckinghamshire the other day, I passed Cassiobury, the grove, the little lane leading down to Heath Farm, and Miss M——­’s cottage, and the first days of our acquaintance came back to my memory.  I suppose I should have liked and loved you wherever I had met you, but you come in for a share of my love and liking of Cassiobury, and the spring, the beautiful season in which we met first.  I send you the long-promised lock of my hair; you will be surprised at the lightness of the shade—­at least, I was.  It was cut from my forehead, and I think it is a nice bit; tell me that you get it safe.

Henry is staying in Buckinghamshire in all the ecstasy of a young cockney’s first sporting days.  When he was quite a child and was asked what profession he intended to embrace, he replied that he would be “a gentleman and wear leather breeches,” and I think it is the very destiny he is fitted to fill.  He is the perfect picture of happiness when in his shooting-jacket and gaiters, with his gun on his shoulder and a bright day before him; and although we were obliged to return to town, my mother was unwilling to curtail his pleasure, and left him to murder pheasants and hares, and