those passages in which poor Sir Thomas Lawrence had pointed out alterations and suggested improvements.  He is a great loss to me, individually.  His criticism was invaluable to me.  He was a most attentive observer; no shade of feeling or slightest variation of action or inflection of voice escaped him; his suggestions were always improvements, conveyed with the most lucid clearness; and, as you will easily believe, his strictures were always sufficiently tempered with refined flattery to have disarmed the most sensitive self-love.  My Juliet and Belvidera both owe much to him, and in this point of view alone his loss is irreparable to me.  It is some matter of regret, too, as you may suppose, that we can have no picture of me by him, but this is a more selfish and less important motive of sorrow than my loss of his advice in my profession.  I understand that my aunt Siddons was dreadfully shocked by the news, and cried, “And have I lived to see him go before me!” ...  His promise to send you a print from his drawing of me, dearest H——­, he cannot perform, but I will be his executor in this instance, and if you will tell me how it can be conveyed to you, I will send you one.

This letter, my dearest H——­, which was begun on Sunday, I now sit down to finish on Tuesday evening, and cannot do better, I think, than give you a full account of our last night’s success; for a very complete success it was, I am happy to say.  Murphy’s play of “The Grecian Daughter” I suppose you know; or if you do not, your state is the more gracious, for certainly anything more flat, poor, and trashy I cannot well conceive.  It had been, you know, a great part of my aunt Siddons’s, and nothing better proves her great dramatic genius than her having clothed so meager a part in such magnificent proportions as she gave to it, and filled out by her own poetical conception the bare skeleton Mr. Murphy’s Euphrasia presented to her.  This frightened me a great deal; Juliet and Belvidera scarcely anybody can do ill, but Euphrasia I thought few people could do well, and I feared I was not one of them.  Moreover, the language is at once so poor and so bombastic that I took double the time in getting the part by rote I should have taken for any part of Shakespeare’s.  My dress was beautiful; I think I will tell it you.  You know you told me even an account of hat and feathers would interest you.  My skirt was made immensely full and with a long train; it was of white merino, almost as fine as cashmere, with a rich gold Grecian border.  The drapery which covered my shoulders (if you wish to look for the sort of costume in engravings, I give you its classical name, peplum) was made of the same material beautifully embroidered, leaving my arms quite free and uncovered.  I had on flesh-colored silk gloves, of course.  A bright scarlet sash with heavy gilt acorns, falling to my feet, scarlet sandals to match, and a beautiful Grecian head-dress in gold, devised by my mother,