Friday, 9th.—­Rehearsed “Francis I.”  When I came home found a charming letter and some Indian books, from that most amiable of all the wise men of the East, Ramohun Roy.  Mrs. Jameson and Mr. Harness called.

Saturday, 10th.—­Rehearsed “Francis I.”  Tried on my dresses for “The Hunchback;” they will be beautiful.  The rehearsal was over long before the carriage came for me; so I went into my father’s room and read the newspaper, while he and Mr. Bartley discussed the cast of Knowles’s play.  It seems my father will not act in it.  I am sorry for that; it is hardly fair to Knowles, for no one else can do it.  My poor father seemed too bewildered to give any answer, or even heed, to anything, and Mr. Bartley went away.  My father continued to walk up and down the room for nearly half an hour, without uttering a syllable; and at last flung himself into a chair, and leaned his head and arms on the table.  I was horribly frightened, and turned as cold as stone, and for some minutes could not muster up courage enough to speak to him.  At last I got up and went to him, and, on my touching his arm, he started up and exclaimed, “Good God, what will become of us all!” I tried to comfort him, and spoke for a long time, but much, I fear, as a blind man speaks of colors.  I do not know, and I do not believe any one knows, the real state of terrible involvement in which this miserable concern is wrapped.  What I dread most of all is that my father’s health will break down.  To-day, while he was talking to me, I saw him suddenly put his hand to his side in a way that sent a pang through my heart.  He seems utterly prostrated in spirit, and I fear he will brood himself ill.  God help us all!  I came home with a heavy heart, and got ready my things for the theater, and went over my part.  Emily called....  She brought me my aunt Siddons’s sketches of Constance and Lady Macbeth.  They are simply written, and though not analytically deep or powerful, are true, clear, and good, as far as their extent reaches.  She thinks Constance more motherly than queenly, and I do not altogether agree with her.  I do not think the scene after Arthur is taken prisoner alone establishes my aunt’s position; the mother’s sorrow there sweeps every other consideration away.  It is before that that I think her love for her child is in some measure mixed with the feeling of the sovereign for his heir; a love of power, in fact, embodied in the boy who was to continue the dominion of a race of princes.  He was her royal child, and that I do not think she ever forgot till he was, in her imagination, her dead child.  She says she could endure his being thrust from all his rights if he had been a less gracious creature, and goes on—­

“But thou art fair, dear boy:  and at thy birth
Nature and fortune joined to make thee great;”