be devised, ordered, and
executed in the shortest imaginable time.

October 3d.

You see how truly I prophesied at the beginning of this letter,
when I said that the hour before breakfast was perhaps the only one
I should be able to command that day. I might have said that week,
for this is the first instant I have been able to call my own since
then. I rehearsed Juliet yesterday, and shall do so again to-morrow
morning; the theater opens with it to-morrow night. I have a new
nurse, and I am rehearsing for her, poor woman! She is dreadfully
alarmed at taking Mrs. Davenport's place, who certainly was a very
great favorite. I am half crazy with the number of new dresses to
be got; for though, thanks to the kindness and activity of my
mother, none of the trouble of devising them ever falls on me, yet
the bare catalogue of silks and satins and velvets, hats and
feathers and ruffs, fills me with amazement and trepidation. I
fancy I shall go through all the old parts, and then come out in a
new tragedy. I shall be most horribly frightened, but I hope I
shall do well, for the sake of the poor author, who is a young man
of great abilities, and to whom I wish every success. The subject
of his play is taken from a Spanish one, called "The Jew of
Aragon," and the whole piece is of a new and unhackneyed order. My
father and I play a Jewish father and daughter; this and the
novelty of the story itself will perhaps be favorable to the play;
I hope so with all my heart.

Mrs. Henry Siddons has taken a house in London for six months; I
have not seen her yet, but am most anxious to do so. Anxiety and
annoyance, I fear, have just caused her a severe indisposition, but
she is a little better now. Mrs. Siddons is much better. She is
staying at Leamington at present.

Dearest H----, returning from Buckinghamshire the other day, I
passed Cassiobury, the grove, the little lane leading down to Heath
Farm, and Miss M----'s cottage, and the first days of our
acquaintance came back to my memory. I suppose I should have liked
and loved you wherever I had met you, but you come in for a share
of my love and liking of Cassiobury, and the spring, the beautiful
season in which we met first. I send you the long-promised