Perhaps you have heard of Miss Charlotte Cushman, the actress? The summer before we left America, she sent a note to Mr. Hawthorne, requesting him to sit to a lady for his miniature, which she wished to take to England. Mr. Hawthorne could not refuse, though you can imagine his repugnance on every account. He went and did penance, and was then introduced to Miss Cushman. He liked her for a very sensible person with perfectly simple manners. The other day he met her in Liverpool, and she told him she had been intending to call on me ever since she had been at her sister's at Rose Hill Hall, Woolton, seven miles from Liverpool. Mr. Hawthorne wished me to invite her to dine and pass the night. I invited her to dine on the 29th of December. She accepted and came. I found her tall as her famous character, Meg Merrilies, with a face of peculiar, square form, most amiable in expression, and so very untheatrical in manner and bearing that I should never suspect her to be an actress. She has left the stage now two years, and retires upon the fortune she has made; for she was a very great favorite on the English stage, and retired in the height of her fame. The children liked her prodigiously, and Rose was never weary of the treasures attached to her watch-chain. I could not recount to you the gems clustered there,--such as a fairy tiny gold palette, with all the colors arranged; a tiny easel with a colored landscape, quarter of an inch wide; a tragic and comic mask, just big enough for a gnome; a cross of the Legion of Honor; a wallet, opening with a spring, and disclosing compartments just of a size for the Keeper of the Privy Purse of the Fairy Queen; a dagger for a pygmy; two minute daguerreotypes of friends, each as large as a small pea, in a gold case; an opera-glass; Faith, Hope, and Charity represented by a golden heart and anchor, and I forget what,--a little harp; I cannot remember any more. These were all, I think, memorials of friends. In the morning she sat down to 'Una's beautifully toned piano, and sang one of Lockhart's Spanish ballads, with eloquent expression, so as to make my blood tingle.