After dinner, wrote journal. At half-past five, went to the theatre: the play was the Hunchback,--the house was very good. I wonder if any body on earth can form the slightest idea of the interior of this wretched little theatre; 'tis the smallest I ever was in. The proprietors are poor, the actors poorer; and the grotesque mixture of misery, vulgarity, stage-finery, and real raggedness, is beyond every thing strange, and sad, and revolting,--it reminds me constantly of some of Hogarth's pictures, and passages in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. After the play, came home and supped. By the by, just as I had done breakfast this morning, Judge ---- called, who is the most exquisite original I have met with even in this land of their abundance. He gave me a long scolding for getting up so late, and assured me that I meant to settle in this country, at the same time drawing an enchanting picture of rural happiness to the west,--a cottage by a rivulet, with two cows, and just enough to starve upon!--I think I see myself there. This sentimental prophecy was prefaced by a remark that he knew I was very romantic, and interrupted every two minutes by a dexterous expectoral interjection, which caused me nearly to jump off my chair with dismay. _Saturday, 19th._ _Giorno d'orrore!_--but I won't anticipate. They have settled to act Much Ado about Nothing, instead of the Inconstant. I have no clothes for Beatrice,--but that don't matter. After breakfast, went to rehearsal, and then walked with my father to see a very pretty model of what is to be the town-hall. It never will be, for the corporation are as poor as _Job's kittens_ (Americanism--communicated by Captain ----), and the city of Washington itself is only kept alive by Congress. Talking of the city of Washington,--'tis the strangest thing by way of a town that can be fancied. It is laid out to cover, I should think, some ten miles square, but the houses are here, there, and no where: the streets, conventionally not properly so called, are roads, crooked or straight, where buildings are _intended_ to be. Every now and then an interesting gap of a quarter of a mile occurs between those houses that _are_ built: in the midst of the town, you can't help fancying you are in the country; and between wooden palings, with nothing to be seen on either side but cedar bushes and sand, you are informed you are in the midst of the town. The Elysian Fields is a broken patch of moorland, sand, and gravel: the Jardin des Plantes is a nursery-ground full of slips of shrubs a foot and a half high; the Tiber, alias Goose Creek, is an unhappy-looking ditch;--and Washington altogether struck me as a rambling red-brick image of futurity, where nothing _is_, but all things _are to be_. Came home and habited. At half-past twelve, Captain ---- came for me; just as we were going, ---- called. He was on horseback, and asked leave to join us, which I agreed to very readily. He was