Two of our family, my eldest brother and myself, were endowed with such robust self-esteem and elastic conceit as not only defied repression, but, unfortunately for us, could never be effectually snubbed; with my sister and my younger brother the case was entirely different, and encouragement was rather what they required.  How well it is for the best and wisest, as well as the least good and least wise, of trainers of youth, that God is above all.  I do not myself understand the love that blinds one to the defects of those dear to one; their faults are part of themselves, without which they could not be themselves, no more to be denied or dissembled, it seems to me, than the color of their eyes or hair.  I do not feel the scruple which I observe in others, in alluding to the failings of those they love.  The mingled good and evil qualities in my friends make up their individual identity, and neither from myself, nor from them, nor from others does it ever occur to me that half that identity should or could be concealed.  I could as soon imagine them without their arms or their legs as without their peculiar moral characteristics, and could no more think of them without their faults than without their virtues.

Many were the pleasant hours, in spite of my misgivings, that I passed with a book in my hand, mechanically pacing the gravel walks of Russell Square.  Certain readings of Shakespeare’s plays, “Othello” and “Macbeth” especially, in lonely absorption of spirit, I associate for ever with that place.  I remember, too, reading at my father’s request, during those peripatetic exercises, two plays written by Sheil for his amiable countrywoman, Miss O’Neill, in which she won deserved laurels:  “Evadne, or the Statue,” and “The Apostate.”  I never had the pleasure of seeing Miss O’Neill act; but the impression left on my mind by those plays was that her abilities must have been very great to have given them the effect and success they had.  As for me, as usual, of course my reply to my father was a disconsolate “I am sure I can do nothing with them.”

My friend H——­ S——­, in coming to us in Russell Street, came to a house that had been almost a home to her and her brother when they were children, in the life of my uncle and Mrs. John Kemble, by whom they were regarded with great affection, and whom they visited and stayed with as if they had been young relations of their own.

My hope of learning German and drawing was frustrated by the engrossing calls of my theatrical occupations.  The first study was reserved for a long-subsequent season, when I had recourse to it as a temporary distraction in perplexity and sorrow, from which I endeavored to find relief in some sustained intellectual effort; and I mastered it sufficiently to translate without difficulty Schiller’s “Mary Stuart” and some of his minor poems.