release you from your kind promise of accepting its dedication to yourself, I can only repeat my readiness to do so if upon any other ground whatever you feel reluctant to grace my title-page with your name.  Pray tell me so without hesitation, as I had rather forego that honor than owe it to your courtesy without your entire good-will.

In any event pray accept my best acknowledgments for your kindness,
and believe me always

Your very truly obliged
F. A. K.

This letter was written in answer to some strictures of Lady Dacre’s on what appeared to her coarseness of language in my play of “The Star of Seville,” which she thought unbecoming a “young lady.”  If I remember rightly, too, she said that the introduction of a scene in a bedchamber might be deemed objectionable.  I had asked her permission to dedicate the play to her, which she had granted; and though she failed to convince me that a young-lady element had any business whatever in a play, she very kindly allowed her name to adorn the title-page of my un-young ladylike drama.

Soon after this my father and aunt and myself left London for our summer tour in the provinces, which we began at Bristol.

Monday, July 4th, Bristol.—­The play was “Romeo and Juliet,” and the nurse was a perfect farce in herself; she really was worth any money, and her soliloquy when she found me “up and dressed and down again,” very nearly made me scream with laughter in the middle of my trance.  Indeed, the whole play was probably considered an “improved version” of Shakespeare’s Veronese story, both in the force and delicacy of the text.  Sundry wicked words and coarse appellations were decorously dispensed with; many fine passages received judicious additions; not a few were equally judiciously omitted altogether.  What a shocking hash!

Tuesday, July 5th.—­After breakfast we sallied forth to the market, to my infinite delight and amusement.  It is most beautifully clean; the fruit and vegetables look so pretty, and smell so sweet, and give such an idea of plentiful abundance, that it is delightful to walk about among them.  Even the meat, which I am generally exceedingly averse to go near, was so beautifully and nicely arranged that it had none of its usual repulsiveness; and the sight of the whole place, and the quaint-looking rustic people, was so pleasantly envious.  We stopped to gossip with a bewitching old country dame, whose market stock might have sat, with her in the middle of it, for its picture; the veal and poultry so white and delicate-looking, the bacon like striped pink and white ribbons, the butter so golden, fresh, and sweet, in a great basket trimmed round with bunches of white jasmine, the green leaves and starry blossoms and exquisite perfume making one believe that butter ought always to be served, not in a “lordly dish,” but in a bower of jasmine.  The good lady told us she had just