Wednesday, 11th.—­ ...  At half-past twelve met Mr. Murray, Mr. Allen, and Mr. Byrne....  As we started for our ride, and were “cavalcading” leisurely along York Place, that most enchanting old sweetheart of mine, Baron Hume, came out of a house.  I rode toward him, and he met me with his usual hearty, kind cordiality, and a world of old-fashioned stately courtesy, ending our conference by devoutly kissing the tip of my little finger, to the infinite edification of my party, upon whose minds I duly impressed the vast superiority of this respectful style of gallantry to the flippant, easy familiarity of the present day.  These old beaux beat the young ones hollow in the theory of courtship, and it is only a pity that their time for practice is over.  Commend me to this bowing and finger-kissing! it is at any rate more dignified than the nodding, bobbing, and hand-shaking of the present fashion.  The be-Madaming, too, has in it something singularly pleasing to my taste; there’s a hoop and six yards of brocade in each of its two syllables....  At the theater the play was “Francis I.”  I acted well, and the play went off very well.  Mr. Allen came and sat in the greenroom, telling me all about Constantinople and the Crimea, and the beautiful countries he has seen, and where his memory and his wishes are forever wandering; a rather sad comment upon the perfect vision of content his charming home at Laurieston had suggested to me.

     Thursday, 12th.—­ ...  At the theater the play was “The
     Hunchback.”  The house was very good, and I acted very well.  Dear
     Mr. Allen came into the greenroom, and had a long gossip with me.

Friday, 13th.—­ ...  Went with Mr. Combe to the Phrenological Museum, and spent two hours listening to some very interesting details on the anatomy of the brain, which certainly tended to make the science more credible to my ignorance, though the general theory has never appeared to me as impossible and extravagant as some people think it.  The insuperable point where I stick fast is a doubt of the practically beneficial result which its general acceptance would produce.  I think they overrate the reforming power of their system, though Mr. Combe’s account of the numbers who attend his lectures, and of the improvement of their bodily and mental conditions which he has himself witnessed, must, of course, make me feel diffident of my own judgment in the matter.  Their own experience can alone test the utility of their system, and whether it does or does not answer their expectations.  I thought of Hamlet as I sat on the ground, with my arms and lap full of skulls.  It is curious enough to grasp the empty, worthless, unsightly case in which once dwelt the thinking faculty of a man.  One of the best specimens of the human skull, it seems, is Raphael’s; a cast of whose head