dinner went over my part, dressed and set off for Bridgewater House for our dressed rehearsal of “Hernani.”  Found the stage in a state of unfinish, the house topsy-turvy, and every body to the right and left.  Sat for an hour in the drawing-room while our very specially small and select audience arrived.  Then heard Lady Francis, Henry Greville, Mrs. Bradshaw, and Mr. Mitford try their glee—­one of Moore’s melodies arranged for four voices—­which they sang at the top of their lungs in order to hear themselves, while the carpenters and joiners hammered might and main at the other end of the gallery finishing the theater.

About nine they were getting under way, and we presently began the rehearsal.  The dresses were all admirable; they (not the clothes, but the clothes pegs) were all horribly frightened.  I was a little nervous and rather sad, and I felt strange among all those foolish lads, taking such immense delight in that which gives me so very little, dressing themselves up and acting.  To be sure, “nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.”  Mr. M——­, our prompter, thought fit by way of prompting to keep up a rumbling bass accompaniment to our speaking by reading every word of the play aloud, as the singers are prompted at the opera house, which did not tend much to our assistance.  Everything went very smoothly till an unlucky young “mountaineer” rushed on the stage and terrified me and Hernani half to death by inarticulating some horrible intelligence of the utmost importance to us, which his fright rendered quite incomprehensible.  He stood with his arms wildly spread abroad, stuttering, sputtering, madly ejaculating and gesticulating, but not one articulate word could he get out.  I thought I should have exploded with laughter, but as the woman said who saw the murder, “I knew I mustn’t (faint), and I didn’t.”  With this trifling exception it all went off very well.  Either I was fagged with my morning’s ride or the constitution of the gallery is bad for the voice; I never felt so exhausted with the mere effort of speaking, and thought I should have died prematurely and in earnest in the last scene, I was so tired.  When it was over we adjourned with Lord and Lady Francis and the whole dramatis personae to Mrs. W——­’s magnificent house and splendid supper....

While we were at table everybody suddenly stood up, my mother and myself reverently with the rest, when the whole company drank my health, and I collapsed down into my chair as red and as limp as a skein of scarlet wool, and my mother with some confusion expressed my obligation and her own surprise at the compliment.  I talked a good deal to Captain Shelley, who is a nice lad, and, considering his beauty, and the admiration bestowed on him by all the fine ladies in London, remarkably unaffected.  We are asked down to Oaklands again, and I hope my work at the theater will allow of my going.  What a shocking mess