get to her, but the distance, and the dependence of all interesting young females in London on the legs and leisure of chaperons, prevents me from seeing her as often as I wish.

German is an arduous undertaking, and I have once more abandoned it, not only on account of its difficulty, but because I do not at present wish to enter upon the study of a foreign language, when I am but just awakened to my radical ignorance of my own.  God bless you, dear H——.

                             Yours ever,
          
                                                     FANNY.

As long as I retained a home of my own, I resisted my friend’s half-expressed wish that I should destroy her letters; but when I ceased to have any settled place of habitation, it became impossible to provide for the safe-keeping of a mass of papers the accumulation of which received additions every few days, and by degrees (for my courage failed me very often in the task) my friend’s letters were destroyed.  Few things that I have had to relinquish have cost me a greater pang or sense of loss, and few of the conditions of my wandering life have seemed to me more grievous than the necessity it imposed upon me of destroying these letters.  My friend did not act upon her own theory with regard to my correspondence, and indeed it seems to me that no general rule can be given with regard to the preservation or destruction of correspondence.  What revelations of misery and guilt may lie in the forgotten folds of hoarded letters, that have been preserved only to blast the memory of the dead!  What precious words, again, have been destroyed, that might have lightened for a whole heavy lifetime the doubt and anguish of the living!  In this, as in all we do, we grope about in darkness, and the one and the other course must often enough have been bitterly lamented by those who “did for the best” in keeping or destroying these chronicles of human existence.

Madame Pasta’s daughter once said to Charles Young, who enthusiastically admired her great genius, “Vous trouvez qu’elle chante et joue bien, n’est-ce pas?” “Je crois bien,” replied he, puzzled to understand her drift.  “Well,” replied the daughter of the great lyrical artist, “to us, to whom she belongs, and who know and love her, her great talent is the least admirable thing about her; but no one but us knows that.”

Doubtless if letters of Shakespeare’s could be found, letters developing the mystery of those sorrowful sonnets, or even letters describing his daily dealings with his children, and Mistress Anne Hathaway, his wife; nay, even the fashion, color, and texture of the hangings of “the second-best bed,” her special inheritance, a frenzy of curiosity would be aroused by them.  All his glorious plays would not be worth (bookseller’s value) some scraps of thought and feeling, or mere personal detail, or even commonplace (he must have been sovereignly commonplace) impartment of theatrical business news and gossip to his fellow-players, or Scotch Drummond, or my Lord Southampton, or the Dark Woman of the sonnets.  But we know little about him, thank Heaven! and I am glad that little is not more.