er,
Quaker, theist, I know not what and what not, who was introduced to me,
and was kind enough to take some notice of me. He talked to me of the
literature of his own country, especially its drama, and, finding that I
was already acquainted with the Hindoo theatre through the medium of my
friend Mr. Horace Wilson's translations of its finest compositions, but
that I had never read "Sakuntala," the most remarkable of them all,
which Mr. Wilson had not included in his collection (I suppose because
of its translation by Sir William Jones), Ramohun Roy sent me a copy of
it, which I value extremely as a memento of so remarkable a man, but in
which I confess I am utterly unable to find the extraordinary beauty and
sublimity which he attributed to it, and of which I remember Goethe also
speaks enthusiastically (if I am not mistaken, in his conversations with
Eckermann), calling it the most wonderful production of human genius.
Goethe had not, any more than myself, the advantage of reading
"Sakuntala" in Sanskrit, and I am quite at a loss to account for the
extreme and almost exaggerated admiration he expresses for it.

JAMES STREET, BUCKINGHAM GATE, August 23, ----.
MY DEAREST H----,

I received your last on my return from the country, where I had
been staying a fortnight, and I assure you that after an
uncomfortable and rainy drive into town I found it of more service
in warming me than even the blazing fire with which we are obliged
to shame the month of August.

I have a great deal to tell you about our affairs, and the effect
that their unhappy posture seems likely to produce upon my future
plans and prospects. Do you remember a letter I wrote to you a long
time ago about going on the stage? and another, some time before
that, about my becoming a governess? The urgent necessity which I
think now exists for exertion, in all those who are capable of it
among us, has again turned my thoughts to these two considerations.
My father's property, and all that we might ever have hoped to
derive from it, being utterly destroyed in the unfortunate issue of
our affairs, his personal exertions are all that remain to him and
us to look to. There are circumstances in which reflections that
our minds would not admit at other times of necessity force
themselves upon our consideration. Those talents and
qualificatio