eeable living half
in one's trunks and traveling-bags, as this sort of uncertainty
compels one to do. I studied Dante, wrote verses and sketched, and
tried to be busy; but a defeated departure leaves one's mind and
thoughts only half unpacked, and I felt idle and unsettled, though
I worked at "The Star of Seville" till dinner-time.

After dinner I studied politics in the Examiner and read an article
on Cobbett, which made me laugh, and the motto to which might have
been "Malvolio, thou art sick of self-conceit." ...

_Thursday, July 21st._--At dinner a discussion, suggested by Mr.
D----'s conduct to Mr. Brunton, on the subject of returning evil
for evil, and the difficulty of not doing so, if not deliberately
and in deed, upon impulse and by thought. Nothing is easier in such
matters than to say what one would do, and nothing, I suppose, more
difficult than to do what one should do. So God keep us all from
convenient opportunities of revenging ourselves....

[Occasionally one hears in the streets voices in which the making of a
fortune lies, and when one remembers what fortunes some voices have
commanded, it seems bitterly cruel to think of such a possession begging
its bread for want of the chance that might have made it available by
culture. A woman, some years ago, used to sing at night in the
neighborhood of St. James's Street, whose voice was so exquisite, so
powerful, sweet, and thrilling, a mezzo soprano of such pure tone and
vibrating quality, that Lady Essex, my sister, and myself, at different
times, struck by the woman's magnificent gift and miserable position,
had her into our houses, to hear her sing and see if nothing could be
done to give her the full use of her noble natural endowment. She was a
plain young woman of about thirty, tolerably decently dressed, and with
a quiet, simple manner. She said her husband was a house-paperer in a
small way, and when he was out of employment she used to go out in the
evening and see what her singing would bring her. Poor thing! it was
impossible to do anything for her; she was too old to learn or unlearn
anything. No training could have corrected the low cockney vulgarity and
coarse, ignorant indistinctness and incorrectness of her enunciation.
And so in after years, as I returned repeatedly to England, after longer
or shorter intervals of time, and always inhabited the same neighborhood
in