I am sorry she has such a detestation of Mrs. Marcet and natural philosophy.  As for her letters being shown about, I am not sorry that my indiscretion has relieved A——­ from a restraint which, if it had only been disagreeable to her, would not have mattered so much, but which is calculated to destroy all possibility of free and natural correspondence, and inevitably renders letters mere compositions and their young authors vain and pretentious.  I have always thought the system a bad one, for under it, if a girl’s letters are thought dull, she feels as if she had made a failure, and if they are laughed at and passed from hand to hand with her knowledge, the result is much worse; and in either case, what she writes is no longer the simple expression of her thoughts and feelings, but samples of wit, ridicule, and comic fancy which are to be thought amusing and clever by others than those to whom they are addressed.

You say my mother in her note to you speaks well of my acting in Bianca.  It has succeeded very well, and I think I act some of it very well; but my chief pleasure in its success was certainly her approbation.  She is a very severe critic, and, as she censures sharply, I am only too thankful when I escape her condemnation.  I think you will be pleased with Bianca.  I was surprised when I came to act it at finding how terribly it affected me, for I am not naturally at all jealous, and in this play, while feigning to be so, it seemed to me that it must be really the most horrible suffering conceivable; I am almost sorry that I can imagine it well enough to represent it well.

You say that we love intellect, but I do not agree with you; I do not think intellect excites love.  I do not even think that it increases our love for those we do love, though it adds admiration to our affection.  I certainly do admire intellect immensely; mental power, which allied to moral power, goodness, is a force to uphold the universe.

I have forsworn all discussions about Byron; my mother and I differ so entirely on the subject that, as I cannot adopt her view of his character, I find it easier to be silent about my own.  Perhaps her extreme admiration of him may have thrown me into a deeper disapprobation than I should otherwise have expressed.  He has many excuses, doubtless:  the total want of early restraint, the miserable influence of the injudicious mother who alternately idolized and victimized him, the bitter castigation of his first plunge into literature, and then the flattering, fawning, fulsome adoration of his habitual associates, of course were all against him; but, after all, one cannot respect the man who strikes colors to the enemy as one does the one who comes conqueror out of the conflict.  I now believe that there is a great deal of unreality in those sentiments to which the charm of his verses lent an appearance of truth and depth; in fact, his poetical feelings