"MY DEAR FORREST,--I was in hopes of having a line from you before this time, telling the Boston news, or so much of it at least as concerns you and yours, which is what I care to hear. But you are determined, I suppose, to maintain the character you have so well earned, of being a most dilatory correspondent. I have had the pleasure of hearing this evening, however, through another channel, that you are drawing full houses; and I trust that all is going on well in other respects. Placide and I took a walk out to Bloomingdale last Sunday afternoon, and as we were returning we conjectured that you and Catherine were just sitting down at the board of Mr. and Mrs. Manager Barry. "I have been down town this evening for the first time these several days. I extended my walk to the Park Theatre, where Miss Tree was performing _Rosalind_. The house was about $500; that at the National, Vandenhoff, could not have exceeded $300. Miss Tree's engagement will conclude with her benefit on Friday evening, when she will probably have between $900 and $1000, making her average for the eleven nights about $650. This is considered a very handsome business. Mad. Caridora Allen opens on Monday evening, and her box sheet already shows a fine display of fashionable names. She will have a full and _fine_ house. She has been giving a touch of her quality at some of the soirées of the exclusives, and is pronounced just the thing. The Woodworth benefit limps tediously along. The returning of your money makes a good deal of talk, and the conduct of the committee is much censured. The motive, to injure you, and foist up Vandenhoff at your expense, will meet with a sad discomfiture. My good public is too clear-sighted to be humbugged in so plain a matter. "I hope you continue to make yourself acquainted with that insolent patrician _Coriolanus_. He was not quite so much of a democrat as you and I are; but that is no reason why we should not use him if he can do us a service. I wish Shakspeare, with all his divine attributes, had only had a little of that ennobling love of equal human liberty which is now animating the hearts of true patriots all over the world, and is destined, ere long, to effect a great and glorious change in the condition of mankind. What a vast and godlike influence he might have exerted in moulding the public mind and guiding the upward progress of nations, if his great genius had not been dazzled by the false glitter of aristocratic institutions, and blinded to the equal rights of the great family of man! Had I a little of his transcendent intellect, I would assert the principles of democratic freedom in a voice that should 'fill the world with echoes.'