wrote,
played chess, lounged, and ate red mullet (he who has not done this
has not begun to live); talked of cookery to the philosophers, and of
metaphysics to Mrs. Buller; and altogether cultivated indolence,
and developed the faculty of nonsense with considerable pleasure and
unexampled success. Charles Buller you know: he has just come to town,
but I have not yet seen him. Arthur, his younger brother, I take to
be one of the handsomest men in England; and he too has considerable
talent. Mr. Buller the father is rather a clever man of sense, and
particularly good-natured and gentlemanly; and his wife, who was a
renowned beauty and queen of Calcutta, has still many striking and
delicate traces of what she was. Her conversation is more brilliant and
pleasant than that of any one I know; and, at all events, I am bound to
admire her for the kindness with which she patronizes me. I hope that,
some day or other, you may be acquainted with her.

"I believe I have seen no one in London about whom you would care to
hear,--unless the fame of Fanny Kemble has passed the Channel, and
astonished the Irish Barbarians in the midst of their bloody-minded
politics. Young Kemble, whom you have seen, is in Germany: but I have
the happiness of being also acquainted with his sister, the divine
Fanny; and I have seen her twice on the stage, and three or four times
in private, since my return from Cornwall. I had seen some beautiful
verses of hers, long before she was an actress; and her conversation
is full of spirit and talent. She never was taught to act at all; and
though there are many faults in her performance of Juliet, there is more
power than in any female playing I ever saw, except Pasta's Medea. She
is not handsome, rather short, and by no means delicately formed;
but her face is marked, and the eyes are brilliant, dark, and full of
character. She has far more ability than she ever can display on the
stage; but I have no doubt that, by practice and self-culture, she will
be a far finer actress at least than any one since Mrs. Siddons. I was
at Charles Kemble's a few evenings ago, when a drawing of Miss Kemble,
by Sir Thomas Lawrence, was brought in; and I have no doubt that you
will shortly see, even in Dublin, an engraving of her from it, very
unlike the caricatures that have hitherto appeared. I hate the stage;
and but for her, should very likely never have gone to a theatre again.
Even as it is, the annoyance is much more tha