all knowledge of his having even gone abroad, if possible, from my mother.  She is not in a state to bear such a shock, and I fear that the impossibility of ascertaining anything about him at present, which helps me to remain tolerably collected, would almost drive her distracted.

The news of the revolt in the Netherlands, together with the fact that one of our dear ones is away from us in scenes of peril and disturbance, has, I think, shaken my father’s purpose of sending Henry to Heidelberg.  It is a bad thing to leave a boy of eighteen so far from home control and influences; and he is of a sweet, affectionate, gentle disposition, that makes him liable to be easily led and persuaded by the examples and counsels of others.  Moreover, he is at the age when boys are always in some love-scrape or other, and if he is left alone at Heidelberg, in his own unassisted weakness, at such a distance from us all, I should not be surprised to hear that he had constituted himself the lord and master of some blue-eyed fraeulein with whom he could not exchange a dozen words in her own vernacular, and had become a dis-respectable pater familias at nineteen.  In the midst of all the worry and anxiety which these considerations occasion, we are living here a most unsettled, flurried life of divided work and pleasure.  We have gone out to Heaton every morning after rehearsal, and come in with the W——­s in the evening, to act.  I think to-night we shall sleep there after the play, and come in with the W——­s after dinner to-morrow.  They had expected us to spend some days with them, and perhaps, after our Birmingham engagement, we may be able to do so.  Heaton is a charming specimen of a fine country-house, and Lady W——­ a charming specimen of a fine lady; she is handsome, stately, and gentle.  I like Lord W——­; he is clever, or rather accomplished, and refined.  They are both of them very kind to me, and most pressing in their entreaties that we should return and stay as long as we can with them.  To-morrow is my last night here; on Monday we act at Birmingham, and my father thinks we shall be able to avail ourselves of the invitation of our Liverpool friends, and witness the opening of the railroad.  This would be a memorable pleasure, the opportunity of which should certainly not be neglected.  I have been gratified and interested this morning and yesterday by going over one of the largest manufactories of this place, where I have seen a number of astonishing processes, from the fusing of iron in its roughest state to the construction of the most complicated machinery and the work that it performs.  I have been examining and watching and admiring power-looms, and spinning-jennies, and every species of work accomplished by machinery.  But what pleased me most of all was the process of casting iron.  Did you know that the solid masses of iron-work which we see in powerful engines were many of them cast in moulds of sand?—­inconstant, shifting, restless sand!  The strongest iron of all, though, gets its strength beaten into it.

BIRMINGHAM, September 7, 1830.