might as well be sitting in her robe de chambre on a pebbly pavement, or a heap of flints just prepared for Macadamization.  Stones, though precious, are still stones, and the jump the Marchioness gave when she first felt the full effect of her jewels, is described as something prodigious.  So handsome a person, however, might easily dispense with such ornaments.  A queen of hearts may always look down upon a mere queen of diamonds.

“And what are we to say of other representations?  What a sensation (at any other period how much greater would it have been!) Mr. Sheridan Knowles’ Hunchback has made:  why Mr. Sheridan Knowles made his hero a Hunchback I cannot imagine.  The play is an admirable play; and what is as strange a part of the affair as any, is the acting of the author.  To say it is finished, or fine, would be to talk nonsense; but it is plain, straightforward, common-scene acting, which very much surprised us, more especially from an author, still more from an Irish author; and more still from an author, who in private life is a perfect enthusiast, and a fine phrenzied-eye orator.  Fanny Kemble never appeared to greater advantage in public—­in private, her charming conduct with regard to her brother, the young soldier, speaks volumes for her.  They say she is going to marry a son of Keppell Craven’s, Lord Craven’s uncle.  They met first, I believe, at the acting of Lord Leveson Gower’s play of Hernani, at Bridgewater House, when Mr. Craven reaped much histrionic fame as an amateur.  Of one thing we are quite sure, Miss Kemble will act well wherever she may be placed in the world.

“One of the best conundrums I have heard for a long time, is attributed to that excellent and agreeable fellow, Yates, who is amongst those who do credit to the stage.  Whether it is his own, or not, is a question to rest upon his veracity.  It is this—­’When does an alderman look like a ghost?’ Answer.  ‘When he’s a gobbling.’  This is surely a jeu d’esprit.  By the way, Rogers begins to whistle now; not in fear, or harmony, or for amusement, but I am afraid from the effects produced by advanced age.  I regret this—­he is an excellent person, and a gentlemanly poet; and I never shall forget the patience with which he bore a most unintentional misquotation, made from his works, and in his presence, by a man of the name of Barton, who wanted to compliment him, by recollecting his verses.  The story that he quoted was Rogers’ pretty song of

  “Dear is my little native vale,
    The ring-dove builds and warbles there,
  Close by my cot she tells her tale,
    To every passing villager.”

“Mr. Barton—­who he was I never found out—­having eulogized this little effusion with a superhuman ecstacy, repeated it right to a line—­but not to a word.  He gave it us thus—­

  “Dear is my little native vale,
    The ring-dove builds and warbles there,
  Close by my cot she shows her tail
    To every passing villager.”