and magnificent parties.  This, however, they steadily declined, and she, without resenting it, sent her invitations to my youngest brother alone, to whom she took a great fancy, and to whose accepting her civilities no objection was made.  At her death she left her great wealth to Mr. Coutts’s granddaughter, Miss Burdett Coutts, the lady whose excellent use of her riches has made her known all over the world as one of the most munificently charitable of Fortune’s stewards.

The Duchess of St. Albans was not without shrewd sense and some humor, though entirely without education, and her sallies were not always in the best possible taste.  Her box at Covent Garden could be approached more conveniently by crossing the stage than by the entrance from the front of the house, and she sometimes availed herself of this easier exit to reach her carriage with less delay.  One night when my father had been acting Charles II., the Duchess of St. Albans crossing her old work-ground, the stage, with her two companions, the pretty Ladies Beauclerc, stopped to shake hands with him (he was still in his stage costume, having remained behind the scenes to give some orders), and presenting him to her young ladies, said, “There, my dears; there’s your ancestor.”  I suppose in her earlier day she might not have been a bad representative of their “ancestress.”]

     Monday, April 25th.—­Finished studying Lady Teazle.  In the
     evening at the theater the house was good, but the audience was
     dull and I was in wretched spirits and played very ill.

Dall was saying that she thought in two years of hard work we might—­that is, my father and myself—­earn enough to enable us to live in the south of France.  This monstrous theater and its monstrous liabilities will banish us all as it did my uncle Kemble.  But that I should be sorry to live so far out of the reach of H——­, I think the south of France would be a pleasant abode:  a delicious climate, a quiet existence, a less artificial state of society and mode of life, a picturesque nature round me, and my own dear ones and my scribbling with me—­I think with all these conditions I could be happy enough in the south of France or anywhere.

The audience were very politically inclined, applied all the loyal speeches with fervor, and called for “God save the King” after the play.  The town is illuminated, too, and one hopes and prays that the “Old Heart of Oak” will weather these evil days, but sometimes the straining of the tackle and the creaking of the timbers are suggestive of foundering even to the most hopeful.  The lords have been vindicating their claim to a share in common humanity by squabbling like fishwives and all but coming to blows; the bishops must have been scared and scandalized, lords spiritual not being fighting men nowadays.

After the play Mr. Stewart Newton, the painter, supped with us—­a clever,