“I write as usual for magazines, and (but this is quite between ourselves) I have a tragedy which will I may say certainly—as certainly as we can speak of anything connected with the theatre—be performed at Drury Lane next season. It is the story of ‘Rienzi,’ the friend of Petrarch; the man who restored for a short time the old republican government of Rome. If you do not remember the story you will find it very beautifully told in the last volume of Gibbon, and still more graphically related in L’Abbé de Sadi’s _Memoires pour la Vie de Pétrarque_.” It was not, however, until four years later that the play actually appeared upon the stage. Its success was of vital importance to the little household at Three Mile Cross, and Mary was immersed in business of all sorts during the months preceding its début. Still she had a “heart at leisure” even then to sympathise with her friends in their joys and sorrows. On hearing that Haydon’s important picture of the year had just been purchased by the King, she writes:— “A thousand and a thousand congratulations, my dear friend, to you and your loveliest and sweetest wife! I always liked the King, God bless him! He is a gentleman—and now my loyalty will be warmer than ever.... This is fortune—fame you did not want—but this fashion and fortune. Nothing in this world could please me more—not even the production of my own _Rienzi_. To see you in your place in Art and Talfourd in his in Parliament are the wishes next my heart, and I verily believe that I shall live to see both.... “God bless you, my dear friends! and God save the King!” Miss Mitford writes on Sept. 23rd, 1828, to Sir William Elford:— “My tragedy of _Rienzi_ is to be produced at Drury Lane Theatre on Saturday the 11th of October; that is to say, next Saturday fortnight. “Mr. Young plays the hero, and has been studying the part during the whole vacation; and a new actress makes her first appearance in the part of the heroine. This is a very bold and hazardous experiment, no new actress having come out in a new play within the memory of man; but she is young, pretty, unaffected, pleasant-voiced, with great sensibility, and a singularly pure intonation—a qualification which no actress has possessed since Mrs. Siddons. Stanfield is painting the new scenes, one of which is an accurate representation of Rienzi’s house. This building still exists in Rome.... They have got a sketch which they sent for on purpose, and they are hunting up costumes with equal care; so that it will be very splendidly brought out, and I shall have little to fear, except from the emptiness of London so early in the season.” [Illustration: IN GREAT QUEEN STREET]