the linden tree.

Certainly dancers deserve to be well paid when one thinks of the
mechanical labor, the daily hours of _battements_ and _changements de
pieds_, and turning, and twisting, and torturing of the limbs before
this apparently spontaneous result of mere movement can be obtained.

Ellsler has great dramatic power. Her Tarentelle and Wylie are really
finely tragical in parts; but then she had a first-rate _head_ as well
as foot training.

She is a wonderful artist; but there is something unutterably sad to me
in the contemplation of such a career. The blending in most unnatural
union of the elements of degradation and moral misery with such
exquisite perceptions of beauty, grace, and refinement, produces the
impression of a sort of monstrosity, a deformity of the whole higher
nature, which fills one with poignant compassion and regret. Poor, fair,
admired, despised, flattered, forlorn souls!...

Pray come and see us when you can, and

Believe me very truly yours,
F. A. B.

BUTLER PLACE, June 26th, 1840.
DEAREST HARRIET,

Mr. Combe and Cecilia spent the day with us on their way to New York,
and I did rejoice to think her pilgrimage was over. She has gone through
what her former habits of life must have made a severe experience in
travelling in this country. Her affection for her husband, and her
devotion to his views, are unbounded, and have helped her to submit to
her trial with a cheerfulness and good humor worthy of all praise; for
the luxurious comfort of her life in her mother's house was certainly a
bad preparation for roughing it, as she has been doing for some months
past, for the sake of the phrenologist and his phrenology.... I never
knew any one more improved by the blessed discipline of happiness than
she appears to be. I am afraid my incapacity to accept the whole of
their system would always prevent our being as good friends as we might
otherwise with opportunity become. Perhaps, however, as the opportunity
is not likely to offer often, it does not much matter....

Saunders, the miniature-painter, of London celebrity, has come out here
to look at the pretty faces on this side of the water.... He told me
that he had once executed to order a miniature of me, partly from seeing
me on the stage, and partly from memory. I knew nothing whatever of
this, and th