with her to Bannisters....  In the evening, at the theater, the house was very good, but I played only so-so, and not at all excellent well....

Thursday, August 18th.—­While I was practising I came across that pretty piece of ballad pathos, “The Banks of Allan Water,” and sang myself into sobbing.  Luckily I was interrupted by Dall and my father, who came in with a little girl, poor unfortunate! whose father had brought her to show how well she deserved an engagement at Covent Garden.  She sat down to the piano at his desire, and panted through the great cavatina in the “Gazza Ladra.”  Poor little thing!  I never heard or saw anything that so thoroughly impressed me with the brutal ignorance of our people; for there is scarcely an Englishman of that man’s condition, situated as he is, who would not have done the same thing.  A child of barely ten years old made to sing her lungs away for four hours every day, when it is not possible yet to know what the character and qualities of her voice will be, or even if she will have any voice at all.  Wasting her health and strength in attempting “The Soldier Tired” and “Di piacer,” it really was pitiful.  We gave her plenty of kind words and compliments, and sundry pieces of advice to him, which he will not take, and in a few months no doubt we shall hear of little Miss H——­ singing away as a prodigy, and in a few years the voice, health, and strength will all be gone, and probably the poor little life itself have been worn out of its fragile case.  Stupid barbarian!  After rehearsal drove to Bannisters....  In the evening, at the theater, the play was “The Provoked Husband.”  The house was very full; I played fairly well.  I was rather tired, and Lady Townley’s bones ached, for I had been taking a rowing lesson from Emily, and supplied my want of skill, tyro fashion, with a deal of unnecessary effort.

Friday, August 19th.—­ ...  It sometimes occurs to me that our spirits, when dwelling with the utmost intensity of longing upon those who are distant from us, must create in them some perception, some consciousness of our spiritual presence, so that not by the absent whom I love thinking of me, but by my thinking of them, they must receive some intimation of the vividness with which my soul sees and feels them.  It seems to me as if my earnest desire and thought must not bring those they dwell on to me, but render me in some way perceptible, if not absolutely visible, to them.

“Though thou see me not pass by,
Thou shalt feel me with thine eye.”

I fancy I must create my own image to their senses by the clinging passion with which my thoughts dwell on them.  And yet it would be rather fearful if one were thus subject, not only to the disordered action of one’s own imagination, but to the ungoverned imaginations of others; and so, upon the whole, I don’t believe people would be allowed to pester other people with their presence only by dint of thinking