and we were all greatly pleased with her.  Braham was magnificently great, in spite of his inches.  What a noble artist he is! and with what wonderful vigor he acts through his singing! being no actor at all the moment he stops singing.  Wilson sang out of tune; the music is not in his voice, and he was frightened.  Miss Cawse was rather a dumpy Artaxerxes, which is an impertinent remark for me to make; she has a beautiful contralto voice.  The opera went off brilliantly, and after it the audience called for “God Save the King,” which was performed.  Paganini was in the box opposite to us; what a cadaverous-looking creature he is!  Came home and saw my father, and gave him the report of Miss Sheriff’s success....

Friday, December 2d.—­ ...  I went to see Cecilia Siddons; I thought her looking aged and thin, and Mrs. Wilkinson (Mrs. Siddons’s companion for many years previous to her death) looking sad and ill too.  They have both lost the one idea of their whole lives.

Saturday, 3d.—­ ...  It seems the doctors recommend my father’s going to Brighton.  I was urging him to do so this morning....  After tea I looked on the map for Rhodez, the scene of that horrible Fualdes tragedy (a murder the commission of which involved some singular and terribly dramatic incidents).  I read Daru’s “History of Venice” till bedtime.

Sunday, December 4th.—­ ...  My father, for the first time this fortnight, was able to dine with us.  After dinner I read the whole trial of Bishop and Williams, and their confession.  My mother is reading aloud to us Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s Life.

                               GREAT RUSSELL STREET, December 4, 1831. 
     DEAR H——­,

It is at the sensible hour of a quarter-past twelve at night that I begin this immense sheet of paper, and with the sensible purpose of filling it before I go to bed....  What an unsatisfactory invention letter-writing is, to be sure; and yet there is none better for the purpose.  When you asked me so affectionately in your letter whether I was going to bed, I concluded naturally that you were writing to me instead of doing so yourself; but I received the letter at half-past nine in the morning, when I was getting ready to ride.  This sort of epistolary cross-questions and crooked answers is sometimes droll, but oftener sad:  we weep with those who did weep, when they have dried their eyes; and rejoice with those who did rejoice, but the corners of whose mouths are already drawn down for crying, while we fancy we are smiling sympathetically with them....  You ask me how the world goes with me, and I can only say round, as I suppose it does with everybody.  All goes on precisely as usual with me; my life is exceedingly uniform, and it is seldom that anything occurs to disturb its monotonous routine.  My dear father, thank Heaven, is better, but still very weak, and I fear