[Sidenote: The same.] DEVONSHIRE TERRACE, _Tuesday Morning, 25th March, 1851._ MY DEAR BULWER, Coming home at midnight last night after our first rehearsal, I find your letter. I write to entreat you, if you make any change in the first three acts, to let it be only of the slightest kind. Because we are now fairly under way, everybody is already drilled into his place, and in two or three rehearsals those acts will be in a tolerably presentable state. It is of vital importance that we should get the last two acts _soon_. The Queen and Prince are coming--Phipps wrote me yesterday the most earnest letter possible--the time is fearfully short, and we _must_ have the comedy in such a state as that it will go like a machine. Whatever you do, for heaven's sake don't be persuaded to endanger that! Even at the risk of your falling into the pit with despair at beholding anything of the comedy in its present state, if you can by any possibility come down to Covent Garden Theatre to-night, do. I hope you will see in Lemon the germ of a very fine presentation of Sir Geoffrey. I think Topham, too, will do Easy admirably. We really did wonders last night in the way of arrangement. I see the ground-plan of the first three acts distinctly. The dressing and furnishing and so forth, will be a perfect picture, and I will answer for the men in three weeks' time. In great haste, my dear Bulwer, Ever faithfully yours. [Sidenote: Mrs. Cowden Clarke.] GREAT MALVERN, _29th March, 1851._ MY DEAR MRS. COWDEN CLARKE, Ah, those were days indeed, when we were so fatigued at dinner that we couldn't speak, and so revived at supper that we couldn't go to bed; when wild in inns the noble savage ran; and all the world was a stage, gas-lighted in a double sense--by the Young Gas and the old one! When Emmeline Montague (now Compton, and the mother of two children) came to rehearse in our new comedy[45] the other night, I nearly fainted. The gush of recollection was so overpowering that I couldn't bear it. I use the portfolio[46] for managerial papers still. That's something. But all this does not thank you for your book.[47] I have not got it yet (being here with Mrs. Dickens, who has been very unwell), but I shall be in town early in the week, and shall bring it down to read quietly on these hills, where the wind blows as freshly as if there were no Popes and no Cardinals whatsoever--nothing the matter anywhere. I thank you a thousand times, beforehand, for the pleasure you are going to give me. I am full of faith. Your sister Emma, she is doing work of some sort on the P.S. side of the boxes, in some dark theatre, _I know_, but where, I wonder? W.[48] has not proposed to her yet, has he? I understood he was going to offer his hand and heart, and lay his leg[49] at her feet.