reparing and altering "Mademoiselle de
Belle Isle" for Covent Garden, for both which pieces of work I hope to
get something towards my L97. Besides this, I have offered my "Review of
Victor Hugo" to John for the _British Quarterly Review_, of which he is,
you know, the editor--of course, telling him that it was written for an
American magazine--and he has promised me sixteen guineas for it if it
suits him. Besides this, I have offered Bentley the beginning of my
Southern journal, merely an account of our journey down to the
plantation.... Besides this, I have drawn up and sketched out, act by
act, scene by scene, and almost speech by speech, a play in five acts, a
sequel to the story of Kotzebue's "Stranger," which I hope to make a
good work of. Thus, you see, my brains are not altogether idle; and,
with all this, I am rehearsing "The Hunchback" with our amateurs, for
three and four hours at a time, attending to my own dresses and
Adelaide's (who will attend to nothing), returning, as usual, all the
visits, and going out to dinners and parties innumerable. This, you will
allow, is rather a double-quick-time sort of existence; but the
after-lull of the future will be more than sufficient for rest.

Alexandre Dumas is the author of "Mademoiselle de Belle Isle," and I was
led to select that piece to work upon, not so much from the interest of
the story, which is, however, considerable, as from the dramatic skill
with which it is managed, and the circumstances made to succeed each
other. There is, unfortunately, an insuperably objectionable incident in
it, which I have done my best to modify; but it is one of the most
ingeniously constructed pieces I have seen for a long time, and gives
admirable opportunities for good acting to almost every member of the
_dramatis personae_.

Mademoiselle d'Este has no right to the painful feeling of illegitimacy,
for her mother was her father's wife, and therefore she has not, what
indeed I can conceive to be, a bitter source of wounded pride and
incessant rational mortification. The Duke of Sussex married Lady
Augusta Murray, and that, I should think, might satisfy his daughter, in
spite of all the Acts of Parliament afterwards devised to restrict and
regulate royal marriages. Mademoiselle d'Este's is merely a perpetual
protest against an irreversible social decree, and an incessant,
unavailing struggle for the observance and respect conventionally due to
a rank which is _not_ hers; and