We left London on Wednesday at eight o’clock.  The parting between my mother and Dall (who never met again; my dear aunt died in America, in the second year of our stay there), and myself and my dear little sister, was most bitter....  John came down to Greenwich with us, but would not come on board the steamboat.  He stood on the shore and I at the ship’s side, looking at what I knew was him, though my eyes could distinguish none of his features from the distance.  My poor mother stood crying by my side, and bade me send him away.  I gave him one signal, which he returned, and then ran up the beach, and was gone!—­gone for two years, perhaps more; perhaps gone from me forever in this world!...

We shall be in Liverpool on Monday morning, the 16th of July, and go to Radley’s Hotel, where I hope we shall find you on our arrival.  My father is pretty well, in spite of all the late anxieties and annoyances he has had to wade through.  In the course of the day preceding our departure from London two arrests were served upon him by creditors of the theater, who, I suppose, think when he is gone the whole concern must collapse and fall to pieces, and I began to think some means would be devised to prevent our leaving England after all.  Our parting on Wednesday morning was, as I told you, most miserable....  My poor mother was braver than I had expected; but her parting from us, poor thing, is yet to come.

I found a letter from Emily Fitzhugh here, inclosing one as an introduction to a lady in New York, who had once been her friend....  Edinburgh is lovely and dear, and peace and quiet and repose are always found by me near my dear Mrs. Harry Siddons; but my heart is, oh, so sad!...  Pray answer this directly.  The time is at hand when the quickest “directly” in our correspondence will be three months.

Ever your affectionate
F. A. K.

Monday, 2d.—­My father and I went to the theater to rehearse “Romeo and Juliet.”  In the evening the house was very fair, considering how much the hot weather is against us; but of all the comfortless people to act to, commend me to an Edinburgh audience.  Their undemonstrativeness, too, is something more than mere critical difficulty to be pleased; there is a want of kindliness in the cold, discourteous way in which they allow a stranger to appear before them without ever affording him the slightest token of their readiness to accept the efforts made to please them.  I felt quite sorry this evening for poor Mr. Didear, to whom not the faintest sign of encouragement was vouchsafed on his first coming on.  This is being cold to an unamiable degree, and seems to me both a want of good feeling and good breeding.  I acted as well as they would let me.  As for poor John Mason, concluding, I suppose, from their frozen silence that he was flat and ineffective, he ranted and roared, and pulled me about in the last scene, till I thought