hard enough and long enough about them.  It would be intolerable, and yet I have sometimes fancied I was thinking myself visible to some one....  In the evening, at the theater, the house was very good; the play was “The Gamester,” and I played very ill.  I felt fagged to death; my work tires me, and I am growing old.

Saturday, 20th.—­At Bannisters all the morning.  Emily gave me two charming Italian songlets, and then they drove us down to Southampton.  At the theater this evening the house was all but empty, owing to some stupid blunder in the advertisement.  The play was “The School for Scandal,” and I played well....  To-morrow I shall be at home once more in smoky London.

                                         SOUTHAMPTON, August 19, 1831. 
     MY DEAREST H——­,

I do not like to defer answering you any longer, though I am not very fit to write, for I am half blind with crying, and have a torturing side-ache, the results of bodily fatigue and nervous anxiety; but if I do not write to you to-night I know not when I shall be able to do so, for I shall have to rehearse every morning and to act every night, and I expect the intermediate hours will be spent on the road to and from Bannisters, the Fitzhughs’ place near here.  I have been traveling ever since half-past eight to-day, and, have hardly been three hours out of the coach which brought us from Weymouth, where we have been acting for the last week.  Your letter followed me from Plymouth, and right glad I was to get it....  I do not know what I can write you of if not myself, and I dare say, after all, my thoughts are more amusing to you, or rather, perhaps, more useful, in your processes of observing and studying human nature in general, through my individual case, than if I wrote you word what plays we had been acting, etc., etc....  To meet pain, no matter how severe, the mind girds up its loins, and finds a sort of strength of resistance in its endurance, which is a species of activity.  To endure helplessly prolonged suspense is another matter quite, and a far heavier demand upon all patient power than is in one....

So you have seen the railroad; I am so glad you have seen that magnificent invention.  I wish I had been on it with you.  I wish you had seen Stephenson; you would have delighted in him, I am sure.  The hope of meeting him again is one of the greatest pleasures Liverpool holds out to me....  With regard to what are called “fine people,” and liking their society better than that of “not fine people,” I suppose a good many tolerable reasons might be adduced by persons who have that preference.  They do not often say very wise or very witty things, I dare say; but neither do they tread on one’s feet or poke their elbows into one’s side (figuratively speaking) in their conversation, or commit the numerous solecisms of manner of less well-bred people.  For myself, my social position does