I am to act it next Thursday, when pray think
of me.
I do not know whether you have seen anything in the papers about a
third theater; we have had much anxiety, vexation, and expense
about it, but I have no doubt that Mr. Arnold will carry the
question. The great people want a plaything for this season, and
have set their hearts upon that. I acted Belvidera to my father's
Jaffier at Brighton; you cannot imagine how great a difference it
produced in my acting. Mrs. Siddons and Miss O'Neill had a great
advantage over me in their tragic partners. Have you heard that Mr.
Hope, the author of "Anastasius," is just dead? That was a
wonderfully clever book, of rather questionable moral effects, I
think; the same sort of cynical gloom and discontent which pervade
Byron's writings prevail in that; and I thought it a pity, because
in other respects it seems a genuine book, true to life and human
nature. A few days before I heard of his death, Mr. Harness was
discussing with me a theory of Hope's respecting the destiny of the
human soul hereafter. His notion is that all spirit is after death
to form but one whole spiritual existence, a sort of _lumping_
which I object to.
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