You will be glad to hear that “The Maid of Honor” was entirely successful; that it will have a “great run,” or bring much money to the theater, I doubt.  It is a cold play, according to the present taste of audiences, and there are undoubted defects in its construction which in the fastidious judgment of our critics weigh down its sterling beauties.

It has done me great service, and to you I may say that I think it the best thing I have acted.  Indeed, I like my own performance of it so well (which you know does not often happen to me), that I beg you will make A——­ tell you something about it.  I was beautifully dressed and looked very nice.

We have heard nothing of John for some time now, and my mother has ceased to express, if not to feel, anxiety about him, and seems tranquil at present; but after all she has suffered on his account, it is not, perhaps, surprising that she should subside into the calm of mere exhaustion from that cruel over-excitement.

Our appeal before the Lords, after having been put off once this week, will, in consequence of the threatened dissolution of Parliament, be deferred sine die, as the phrase is.  Oh, what weary work this is for those who are tremblingly waiting for a result of vital importance to their whole fate and fortune!  Thank Heaven, I am liberally endowed with youth’s peculiar power and privilege of disregarding future sorrow, and unless under the immediate pressure of calamity can keep the anticipation of it at bay.  My journal has become a mere catalogue of the names of people I meet and places I go to.  I have had no time latterly for anything but the briefest possible registry of my daily doings.  Mrs. Harry Siddons has taken a lodging in this street, nearly opposite to us, so that I have the happiness of seeing her rather oftener than I have been able to do hitherto; the girls come over, too; and as we have lately taken to acting charades and proverbs, we spend our evenings very pleasantly together.

We are going to get up a piece called “Napoleon.”  I do not mean my cousins and ourselves, but that prosperous establishment, Covent Garden Theatre.  Think of Bonaparte being acted!  It makes one grin and shudder.

I have been three or four times to Mr. Pickersgill, and generally sit two hours at a time to him.  I dare say he will make a nice picture of me, but his anxiety that it should in no respect resemble Sir Thomas Lawrence’s drawing amuses me.  I was in hopes that when I had done with him I should not have to sit to anybody for anything again.  But I find I am to undergo that boredom for a bust by Mr. Turnerelli.  I wish I could impress upon all my artist friends that my face is an inimitable original which nature never intended should be copied.  Pazienza!  I must say, though, that I grudge the time thus