Going into the drawing-room I found my darling Dr. Combe there, and if I had not been so tired I must have made a jump at his neck, I was so very glad to see him.  He brought me a letter from Mr. Combe, whom I love only one step lower.  He sat with us but a short time, and leaves town to-morrow, which I am sorry for, first, because I should like to have seen him again so very much, and next, because I should have been glad that my mother became better acquainted with the mental charms and seductions of the man whose outward appearance seems to have allayed some of her apprehensions for the safety of my heart and those of my Edinburgh cousins.  Mrs. W——­ called soon after.  She is intent upon my acting Mlle. Mar’s part in “Henri Trois.”  I can do nothing with any French part in Covent Garden.  If they can find a theater of half that size to get it up in, well and good; but seen from a distance, which defies discrimination of objects, a thistle is as good as a rose, and in that enormous frame refinement is mere platitude, and finish of detail an unnecessary minutia.

We went to the theater to see a new piece, I believe by Mrs. Norton.  The pit and galleries were very indifferent; the dress circle and private boxes full of fine folk.  Lady St. Maur (Georgiana Sheridan, Mrs. Norton’s youngest sister, afterward Duchess of Somerset and Queen of Beauty) and her husband, with Corinne and Mr. Norton, in a box opposite ours.  What a terrible piece! what atrocious situations and ferocious circumstances! tinkering, starving, hanging—­like a chapter out of the Newgate Calendar.  But, after all, she’s in the right; she has given the public what they desire, given them what they like.  Of course it made one cry horribly; but then of course one cries when one hears of people reduced by sheer craving to eat nettles and cabbage-stalks.  Destitution, absolute hunger, cold and nakedness, are no more subjects for artistic representation than sickness, disease, and the real details of idiotcy, madness, and death.  All art should be an idealized; elevated representation (not imitation) of nature; and when beggary and low vice are made the themes of the dramatist, as in this piece, or of the poet, as in the works of Crabbe, they seem to me to be clothing their inspirations in wood or lead, or some base material, instead of gold or ivory.  The clay of the modeler is more real, but the marble of the sculptor is the clay glorified.  In Crabbe’s writings one has at least the comfort and consolation of a high moral sense, charming versification, and an occasional tender, exquisite expression of the beauties of nature.  Our play to-night could not boast of these alleviations.

Wednesday, June 1st.—­At the riding school saw Miss C——­, who wants me to get the play changed at Covent Garden for this evening—­“rien que cela!” What a fine thing it is to be “one of those people!” They fancy that anybody’s