taken a little of the charm of novelty from my play, my own opinion of it is that it is a clever performance for so young a person, but nothing more.  The next will, I hope, be better, and I think you will agree with me in regard to this.  Dearest H——­, in my last letter want of time and room prevented my enlarging on my hint about the stage, but as far as my own determination goes at present, I think it is the course that I shall most likely pursue.  You know that independence of mind and body seems to me the great desideratum of life; I am not patient of restraint or submissive to authority, and my head and heart are engrossed with the idea of exercising and developing the literary talent which I think I possess.  This is meat, drink, and sleep to me; my world, in which I live, and have my happiness; and, moreover, I hope, by means of fame (the prize for which I pray).  To a certain degree it may be my means of procuring benefits of a more substantial nature, which I am by no means inclined to estimate at less than their worth.  I do not think I am fit to marry, to make an obedient wife or affectionate mother; my imagination is paramount with me, and would disqualify me, I think, for the every-day, matter-of-fact cares and duties of the mistress of a household and the head of a family.  I think I should be unhappy and the cause of unhappiness to others if I were to marry.  I cannot swear I shall never fall in love, but if I do I will fall out of it again, for I do not think I shall ever so far lose sight of my best interest and happiness as to enter into a relation for which I feel so unfit.  Now, if I do not marry, what is to become of me in the event of anything happening to my father?  His property is almost all gone; I doubt if we shall ever receive one pound from it.  Is it likely that, supposing I were willing to undergo the drudgery of writing for my bread, I could live by my wits and the produce of my brain; or is such an existence desirable?

Perhaps I might attain to the literary dignity of being the lioness of a season, asked to dinner parties “because I am so clever;” perhaps my writing faculty might become a useful auxiliary to some other less precarious dependence; but to write to eat—­to live, in short—­that seems to me to earn hard money after a very hard fashion.  The stage is a profession that people who have a talent for it make lucrative, and which honorable conduct may make respectable; one which would place me at once beyond the fear of want, and that is closely allied in its nature to my beloved literary pursuits.

If I should (as my father and mother seem to think not unlikely) change my mind with respect to marrying, the stage need be no bar to that, and if I continue to write, the stage might both help me in and derive assistance from my exercise of the pursuit of dramatic authorship.  And the mere mechanical labor of writing costs me so little, that the union of the two occupations does