love-scrape
or other, and if he is left alone at Heidelberg, in his own
unassisted weakness, at such a distance from us all, I should not
be surprised to hear that he had constituted himself the lord and
master of some blue-eyed _fraeulein_ with whom he could not exchange
a dozen words in her own vernacular, and had become a
_dis_-respectable _pater familias_ at nineteen. In the midst of all
the worry and anxiety which these considerations occasion, we are
living here a most unsettled, flurried life of divided work and
pleasure. We have gone out to Heaton every morning after rehearsal,
and come in with the W----s in the evening, to act. I think
to-night we shall sleep there after the play, and come in with the
W----s after dinner to-morrow. They had expected us to spend some
days with them, and perhaps, after our Birmingham engagement, we
may be able to do so. Heaton is a charming specimen of a fine
country-house, and Lady W---- a charming specimen of a fine lady;
she is handsome, stately, and gentle. I like Lord W----; he is
clever, or rather accomplished, and refined. They are both of them
very kind to me, and most pressing in their entreaties that we
should return and stay as long as we can with them. To-morrow is my
last night here; on Monday we act at Birmingham, and my father
thinks we shall be able to avail ourselves of the invitation of our
Liverpool friends, and witness the opening of the railroad. This
would be a memorable pleasure, the opportunity of which should
certainly not be neglected. I have been gratified and interested
this morning and yesterday by going over one of the largest
manufactories of this place, where I have seen a number of
astonishing processes, from the fusing of iron in its roughest
state to the construction of the most complicated machinery and the
work that it performs. I have been examining and watching and
admiring power-looms, and spinning-jennies, and every species of
work accomplished by machinery. But what pleased me most of all was
the process of casting iron. Did you know that the solid masses of
iron-work which we see in powerful engines were many of them cast
in moulds of sand?--inconstant, shifting, restless sand! The
strongest iron of all, though, gets its strength beaten into it.