n. A fortnight hence
the play will begin once more; a fortnight after that the work will
follow round, and so the letters that I care for go unwritten.

Do you care for French news? I hope not, because I don't know any. There
is a melodrama, called "The French Revolution," now playing at the
Cirque, in the first act of which there is the most tremendous
representation of _a people_ that can well be imagined. There are
wonderful battles and so forth in the piece, but there is a power and
massiveness in the mob which is positively awful. At another theatre,
"Clarissa Harlowe" is still the rage. There are some things in it rather
calculated to astonish the ghost of Richardson, but Clarissa is very
admirably played, and dies better than the original to my thinking; but
Richardson is no great favourite of mine, and never seems to me to take
his top-boots off, whatever he does. Several pieces are in course of
representation, involving rare portraits of the English. In one, a
servant, called "Tom Bob," who wears a particularly English waistcoat,
trimmed with gold lace and concealing his ankles, does very good things
indeed. In another, a Prime Minister of England, who has ruined himself
by railway speculations, hits off some of our national characteristics
very happily, frequently making incidental mention of "Vishmingster,"
"Regeenstreet," and other places with which you are well acquainted.
"Sir Fakson" is one of the characters in another play--"English to the
Core;" and I saw a Lord Mayor of London at one of the small theatres the
other night, looking uncommonly well in a stage-coachman's waistcoat,
the order of the Garter, and a very low-crowned broad-brimmed hat, not
unlike a dustman.

I was at Geneva at the time of the revolution. The moderation and
mildness of the successful party were beyond all praise. Their appeals
to the people of all parties--printed and pasted on the walls--have no
parallel that I know of, in history, for their real good sterling
Christianity and tendency to promote the happiness of mankind. My
sympathy is strongly with the Swiss radicals. They know what Catholicity
is; they see, in some of their own valleys, the poverty, ignorance,
misery, and bigotry it always brings in its train wherever it is
triumphant; and they would root it out of their children's way at any
price. I fear the end of the struggle will be, that some Catholic power
will step in to crush the dangerously well-educated republics