Thursday, 19th, Liverpool.—­ ...  At eleven went to the theater for rehearsal; it was very slovenly.  I wonder what the performance will be?  In the evening to the theater; the play was “Francis I.,” and the house was very good, which was almost to be wondered at in this plague-stricken city. [The cholera was raging in Liverpool.] I was frightened, as I always am at a new part, even in my own play, though glad enough to resign that odious dignity, the queen-mother. [The part of Louisa of Savoy had been given to me when first the piece was brought out at Covent Garden; I was now playing the younger heroine, Francoise de Foix.] I played pretty well, though there is nothing to be done with the part.  She is perfectly uninteresting and ineffective; but it is better for the cast of the play that I should act her instead of Louisa.  And when one can have such a specimen of a queen as we had to-night, it would be a thousand pities the audience should be put off with my inferior views of royalty.  Such bouncing, frowning, growling, and snarling might have challenged a whole zoological garden full of wild beasts to surpass.  It’s a comfort to see that it is possible to play that part worse than I did.

Friday, 20th.—­Went to rehearsal....  Received a letter from Lizzie, giving me an account of my dear old Newhaven fish-wife, poor body! to whom I had sent a farewell present by her.  I received also a long copy of anonymous verses, in which I was rather pathetically remonstrated with for seeking fame and fortune out of my own country.  The author is slightly mistaken; neither the love of money nor notoriety would carry me away from England, but the love of my father constrains me....  The American Consul and Mr. Arnold called.  After dinner I read Combe’s “Constitution of Man,” which interested me very much, though it fails to convince me that phrenology can alone bestow this insight into human nature.  At the theater “The School for Scandal;” I played pretty well, though the actors were all dreadfully imperfect, and some of them so nervous and quick, and some so nervous and slow, that it was hardly possible to keep pace with them.

Saturday, 21st.—­From Liverpool to Manchester.  After all, this Liverpool, with all its important wealth and industry, is a dismal-looking place, a swarming world of dingy red houses and dirty streets....  How well I remember the opening of this railway!...  They have placed a marble tablet in the side of the road to commemorate the spot where poor Huskisson fell; I remembered it by the pools of dark-green water that, as we passed them then, made a dismal impression on me; they looked like stony basins of verdigris.  How glad I was to see Chatmoss—­that villainous, treacherous, ugly, useless bog—­trenched and ditched in process of draining and reclaiming, with the fair, holy, healthy grain waving in bright green patches over the brown peaty soil!