The peculiar gift of their second son, my eccentric friend Richard, was a genius for painting, which might have won him an honored place among English artists, had he ever chosen to join their ranks as a competitor for fame and fortune.

                             EASTLANDS COTTAGE, WEYBRIDGE, ——­, 1827. 
     MY DEAR H——­: 

I wrote to you immediately upon our arriving here, which is now nearly a month ago, but having received no answer, and not having heard from you for some time, I conjecture that our charming post-office has done as it did last year, and kept my letters to itself.  I therefore take the opportunity, which my brother’s departure for town to-morrow gives me, of writing to you and having my letter posted in London.  John’s going to town is an extreme loss to me, for here we are more thrown together and companionable than we can be in London.  His intellectual occupations and interests engross him very much, and though always very interesting to me, are seldom discussed with or communicated to me as freely there as they are here—­I suppose for want of better fellowship.  I have latterly, also, summoned up courage enough to request him to walk with me; and to my some surprise and great satisfaction, instead of the “I can’t, I am really so busy,” he has acquiesced, and we have had one or two very pleasant long strolls together.  He is certainly a very uncommon person, and I admire, perhaps too enthusiastically, his great abilities.

My father is in Paris, where he was to arrive yesterday, and where to-morrow he will act in the first regularly and decently organized English theater that the French ever saw.  He is very nervous, and we, as you may easily conceive, very anxious about it; when next I write to you I will let you know all that we hear of the result.  I must repeat some part of my last letter, in case you did not receive it.  We have taken a house in James Street, Buckingham Gate, Westminster, which appears to be in every way a desirable and convenient abode; in itself it is comfortable and cheerful, and its nearness to Henry’s school and comparative nearness to the theatre, together with its view over the park, and (though last, not least) its moderate rent, make up a mass of combined advantages which few other situations that we could afford can present.

I am extremely busy, dearest H——­, and extremely elated about my play; I know I mentioned it before to you, but you may have reckoned it as one of the soap-bubbles which I am so fond of blowing, admiring, and forgetting; however, when I tell you that I have finished three acts of it, and that the proprietors of Covent Garden have offered me, if it succeeds, two hundred pounds (the price Miss Mitford’s “Foscari” brought her), you will agree that I have some reason to be proud as well as pleased.

As nobody but myself can give you any opinion of it, you must be content to take my