for his philanthropy, plain powerful sense, and lucid forcible writing; but as for John’s politics, they are, as Beatrice tells the prince he is, “too costly for every-day wear.”  His theories are so perfect that I think imperfect men could never be brought to live under a scheme of government of his devising.

I think Mrs. Jameson would like you, and you her, if you met, but my mind is running on something else than this.  My father’s income is barely eight hundred a year.  John’s expenses, since he has been at college, have been nearly three.  Five hundred a year for such a family as ours is very close and careful work, dear H——­, and if my going on the stage would nearly double that income, lessen my dear father’s anxieties for us all, and the quantity of work which he latterly has often felt too much for him, and remove the many privations which my dear mother cheerfully endures, as well as the weight of her uncertainty about our future provision, would not this be a “consummation devoutly to be wished”?

                       ST. JAMES STREET, BUCKINGHAM GATE, March, 1828. 
     MY DEAREST H——­,

I have been thinking what you have been thinking of my long silence, about which, however, perhaps you have not been thinking at all.  What, you say in one of your last about my destroying your letters troubles me a good deal, dearest H——.  I really cannot bear to think of it; why, those letters are one of my very few precious possessions.  When I am unhappy (as I sometimes am), I read them over, and I feel strengthened and comforted; if it is your positive desire that I should burn them, of course I must do it; but if it is only a sort of “I think you had better” that you have about it, I shall keep them, and you must be satisfied with one of my old “I can’t help it’s.”  As for my own scrawls, I do not desire that you should keep them.  I write, as I speak, on the impulse of the moment, and I should be sorry that the incoherent and often contradictory thoughts that I pour forth daily should be preserved against me by anybody.

My father is now in Edinburgh.  He has been absent from London about a week.  I had a conversation with him about the stage some time before he went, in which he allowed that, should our miserably uncertain circumstances finally settle unfavorably, the theatre might be an honorable and advantageous resource for me; but that at present he should be sorry to see me adopt that career.  As he is the best and kindest father and friend to us all, such a decision on his part was conclusive, as you will easily believe; and I have forborne all further allusion to the subject, although on some accounts I regret being obliged to do so.

I was delighted with your long letter of criticisms; I am grateful to you for taking the trouble of telling me so minutely all you thought about my play.  For myself, although at the time