“For Each and for All” was, I think, the name of the volume taken from Miss Martineau’s admirable series of political economy tales, which my friend, Miss S——­, sent me.  The heroine of the story is a young actress, and Miss Martineau once told me that she had derived some slight suggestion of the character from me.

NEW YORK, Friday, April 10, 1833. 
MY DEAREST H——­,

...  On Monday last I acted Lady Macbeth; on Tuesday, Lady Townley; on Wednesday, Belvidera; and last night, Portia, and Mary Copp in “Charles II.”  This is pretty hard work.  To-morrow we start for Boston, which we shall reach on Sunday, and Monday our work begins there....  I think four nights a week as much as either my father or myself ought to work, and as much as we really can work profitably, the rest being money taken from our capital—­i.e., our health.  But in Boston we shall act for three weeks or a month every night but the Saturdays. [The days when four or five performances a week were considered a sufficient exertion for popular actors or singers are far enough in the past, and now there seems to be no limit to the capacity of such artists for earning money by the exercise of their talents.  Five and six performances a week are the normal number now expected from great European stars, or rather those which great European stars expect to give and to be paid for.  Their health is one invariable sacrifice to this over-work, and their artistic excellence a still more grievous one.  It has been asked why artists invariably return to Europe comparatively coarse and vulgar in the style of their performances, and the result is attributed to the want of refined taste and critical judgment of the American audiences—­in my opinion very unjustly, for if want of knowledge and nice perception in the public induces carelessness and indifference in performers, the grasping greed of gain and incessant over-exertion, mental and physical, for the sake of satisfying it, is a far more certain cause of artistic deterioration.  During Madame Ristori’s last visit to America, I went to see a morning performance of “Elizabeta d’Inglterra” by her.  Arriving at the theater half an hour before the time announced for the performance, I found notices affixed to the entrances, stating that the beginning was unavoidably delayed by Madame Ristori’s non-arrival.  The crowd of expectant spectators occupied their seats and bore this prolonged postponement with American—­i.e., unrivaled—­patience, good-temper, and civility.  We were encouraged by two or three pieces of information from some official personage, who from the stage assured us that the moment Madame Ristori arrived (she was coming by railroad from Baltimore) the play should begin.  Then came a telegram, she was coming; then an announcement, she was come; and driving from the terminus straight to the theater, tired and harassed herself with the delay, she dressed herself and appeared before her audience, went