"Awoke a little feverish, but no headach--no dreams neither, thanks to stupor! Two letters; one from * * * *'s, the other from Lady Melbourne--both excellent in their respective styles. * * * *'s contained also a very pretty lyric on 'concealed griefs;' if not her own, yet very like her. Why did she not say that the stanzas were, or were not, of her composition? I do not know whether to wish them hers or not. I have no great esteem for poetical persons, particularly women; they have so much of the 'ideal' in _practics_, as well as _ethics_. "I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff, &c. &c. &c. &c.[96] "Lord Holland invited me to dinner to-day; but three days' dining would destroy me. So, without eating at all since yesterday, I went to my box at Covent Garden. "Saw * * * * looking very pretty, though quite a different style of beauty from the other two. She has the finest eyes in the world, out of which she pretends _not_ to see, and the longest eyelashes I ever saw, since Leila's and Phannio's Moslem curtains of the light. She has much beauty,--just enough,--but is, I think, _mechante_. "I have been pondering on the miseries of separation, that--oh how seldom we see those we love! yet we live ages in moments, _when met_. The only thing that consoles me during absence is the reflection that no mental or personal estrangement, from ennui or disagreement, can take place; and when people meet hereafter, even though many changes may have taken place in the mean time, still, unless they are _tired_ of each other, they are ready to reunite, and do not blame each other for the circumstances that severed them. [Footnote 96: This passage has been already extracted.] "Saturday 27. (I believe--or rather am in _doubt_, which is the ne plus ultra of mortal faith.) "I have missed a day; and, as the Irishman said, or Joe Miller says for him, 'have gained a loss,' or _by_ the loss. Every thing is settled for Holland, and nothing but a cough, or a caprice of my fellow-traveller's, can stop us. Carriage ordered, funds prepared, and, probably, a gale of wind into the bargain. _N'importe_--I believe, with Clym o' the Clow, or Robin Hood, 'By our Mary, (dear name!) that art both Mother and May, I think it never was a man's lot to die before this day.' Heigh for Helvoetsluys, and so forth!