I have been one among those who have deeply regretted the loss, the bankruptcy, which the stage has sustained in the tragic branch of its business by the secession of this lady: but her book, in my opinion, demonstrates such extraordinary powers of writing, that I am willing to flatter myself that we shall have gained eventually rather than lost by her having forsaken a profession too fatiguing, too exhausting to the spirits, and necessarily occupying too much time, to have permitted her doing what now we may fairly hope she will do,--namely, devote herself to literature. There are some passages of her hastily-written, and too hastily-published journal, which evidently indicate that her mind was at work upon composition. She appears to judge herself and her own efforts so severely, that, when speaking of the scenes of an unpublished tragedy, she says "they are not bad,"--which is, I think, the phrase she uses: I feel quite persuaded that they are admirable. Then again she says, "Began writing a novel...." I would that she would finish it too!--and as I hold it to be impossible that such a mind as hers can remain inactive, I comfort myself with the belief that we shall soon again receive some token of her English recollections handed to us across the Atlantic. That her next production will be less _faulty_ than her last, none can doubt, because the blemishes are exactly of a nature to be found in the journal of a heedless young traveller, who having caught, in passing, a multitude of unseemly phrases, puts them forth in jest, unmindful--much too unmindful certainly--of the risk she ran that they might be fixed upon her as her own genuine individual style of expression. But we have only to read those passages where she certainly is not jesting--where poetry, feeling, goodness, and piety glow in every line--to know what her language is _when she is in earnest_. On these occasions her power of expression is worthy of the thoughts of which it is the vehicle,--and I can give it no higher praise. LETTER LXVI. A pleasant Party.--Discussion between an Englishman and a Frenchman.--National Peculiarities.