And yet I suppose it is better so:  he would only have lived to bitter disappointment, and the despairing conviction that the spirit he appealed to did not animate one human being in his deplorable and degenerate land.  A young Englishman, of the name of Boyd, John’s sometime friend and companion, was taken and shot with the rest:  it choked me to think of his parents, his brothers and sisters.  Surely God has been most merciful to us in sparing us such an anguish, and bringing our wanderer home before this day of doom.  How I thought of Richard Trench and his people!  John did not seem to me to be violently affected, though his first exclamation was one of sharp and bitter pain:  I suppose he must, long ere this, have felt that there could be no other end to this utterly hopeless attempt....  In the afternoon I called on Mrs. Norton, who is always to me astonishingly beautiful.  The baby was asleep, and so I could not see it, but Spencer has grown into a very fine child.

Monday, 26th.—­Went to see how the pantomime did.  I did not think it very amusing, but there was an enchanting little girl (Miss Poole) who did Tom Thumb, and whose attitudes in her armor were most of them copied from the antique, and really beautiful.  Poor dear, bright little thing!

My father was in bed when we returned; I went and saw him for a minute, to tell him how the pantomime had succeeded; it ended with some wonderful tight-rope dancing by an exceedingly steady, graceful man; but it turned me perfectly sick, and I hate all those sort of things.

Thursday, 29th.—­After dinner worked at “The Star of Seville.”  I really wonder I have the patience to go on with it, it is such heavy trash.  After tea my father begged me to sing to him.  I am always horribly frightened at singing before my mother; I cannot bear to distress her accurate ear with my unsteady intonation, and the more I think of it, the colder my hands grow and the hotter my face, the huskier my voice and the flatter my notes; I bungle over accompaniments that I have at my fingers’ ends, and forget words I know as well as my alphabet; in short, I feel like a wretch, and I sing like a wretch, and I make wretched all my hearers.  My mother’s own nervous terror when she had to sing on the stage, as a young woman, was excessive, as she has often told me; and her mother repeatedly but vainly endeavored to bribe her with the promise of a guinea if she would sing as well in public any of the songs that she sang perfectly well at home.  I sang for some time, and by degrees got more courage, till at last I managed to sing tolerably in tune.  My mother says I have more voice than A——.  I am sorry to hear her voice has grown thin—­that sweet, melodious voice I did so love to listen to; but perhaps it will recover its tone.

Wednesday, 28th.—­My dear, dear father came down to breakfast, looking horribly thin and pale, poor fellow! but, thank God,