art and the public taste by throwing open to unlimited speculation the right to establish theaters and give theatrical representations.  The great companies of good sterling actors would be broken up and dispersed, and there would no longer exist establishments sufficiently important to maintain any large body of them; the best plays would no longer find adequate representatives in any but a few of the principal parts, the characters of theatrical pieces produced would be lowered, the school of fine and careful acting would be lost, no play of Shakespeare’s could be decorously put on the stage, and the profession and the public would alike fare the worse for the change.  But he was one of the patented proprietors, one of the monopolists, a party most deeply interested in the issue, and therefore, perhaps, an incompetent judge in the matter.  The cause went against us, and every item of his prophecy concerning the stage has undoubtedly come to pass.  The fine companies of the great theaters were dissolved, and each member of the body that together formed so bright a constellation went off to be the solitary star or planet of some minor sphere.  The best plays no longer found decent representatives for any but one or two of their first parts; the pieces of more serious character and higher pretension as dramatic works were supplanted by burlesques and parodies of themselves; the school of acting of the Kembles, Young, the Keans, Macready, and their contemporaries, gave place to no school at all of very clever ladies and gentlemen, who certainly had no pretension to act tragedy or declaim blank verse, but who played low comedy better than high, and lowest farce best of all, and who for the most part wore the clothes of the sex to which they did not belong.  Shakespeare’s plays all became historical, and the profession was decidedly the worse for the change; I am not aware, however, that the public has suffered much by it.

                                  GREAT RUSSELL STREET, March 5, 1831. 
     MY DEAREST H——­,

I am extremely obliged to you for your long account of Mrs. John Kemble, and all the details respecting her with which, as you knew how intensely interesting they were likely to be to me, you have so kindly filled your letter.  Another time, if you can afford to give a page or two to her interesting dog, Pincher, I shall be still more grateful; you know it is but omitting the superfluous word or two you squeeze in about yourself.

As for the journal I keep, it is—­as what is not?—­a matter of mingled good and bad influences and results.  I am so much alone that I find this pouring out of my thoughts and feelings a certain satisfaction; but unfortunately one’s book is only a recipient, and not a commentary, and I miss the sifting, examining, scrutinizing, discussing intercourse that compels one to the analysis of one’s own ideas and sentiments, and makes the society of any one with whom one