I am reading Cooper’s novel of “The Borderers.”  It is striking and powerful, and some of it I think very beautiful, especially all that regards poor Ruth, which, I remember, is what struck you so much.  I like the book extremely.  There is a soft sobriety of color over it all that pleases me, and reminds me of your constant association of religion and the simple labors of an agricultural life.  It is wonderful how striking the description of this neutral-tinted existence is, in which life, love, death, and even this wild warfare with the savage tribes, by which these people were surrounded, appear divested of all their natural and usual excitements.  Religion alone (and this, of course, was inevitable) is the one imaginative and enthusiastic element in their existence, and that alone becomes the source of vehement feeling and passionate excitement which ought least to admit of fanciful interpretations and exaggerated and morbid sentiment.  But the picture is admirably well drawn, and I cannot help sometimes wishing I had lived in those days, and been one of that little colony of sternly simple and fervently devout Christian souls.  But I should have been a furious fanatic; I should have “seen visions and dreamed dreams,” and fancied myself a prophetess to a certainty.

That luckless concern, in which you are a luckless shareholder (Covent Garden), is going to the dogs faster and faster every day; and, in spite of the Garrick Club and all its noble regenerators of the drama, I think the end of it, and that no distant one, will be utter ruin.  They have been bringing out a new grand opera, called “Robert the Devil,” which they hope to derive much profit from, as it is beyond all precedent absurd and horrible (and, as I think, disgusting); but I am almost afraid that it has none of these good qualities in a sufficient degree to make it pay its own enormous cost.  I have seen it once, and came home with such a pain in my side and confused chaos in my head that I do not think I shall ever wish to see it again.  Write me a line to say when I may look for you.

Ever affectionately yours,
F. A. K.

Saturday, 25th.—­ ...  Finished Fenimore Cooper’s interesting and pathetic novel, “The Borderers.” ...  I came down into the drawing-room with a headache, a sideache, a heartache, and swollen red eyes, and my mother greeted me with the news that the theater was finally ruined, that at Easter it must close, that we must all go different ways, and I probably to America.  I was sobered from my imaginary sorrow directly; for it is astonishing what a different effect real and fictitious distress has upon one.  I could not answer my mother, but I went to the window and looked up and down the streets that were getting empty and dark and silent, and my heart sank as I thought of leaving my home, my England....  After dinner Madame