This evening I hope to be in London again. While the horses are putting-to I write a few words. We saw Lord Carrington's park this morning,--for your comfort be it said, the last, at present at least. The garden is nothing remarkable: the house is in the beloved modern Gothic style, but, being simple and unpretending, looks less affected. It is built of stone, without ornament. A good portrait of Pitt hangs in the library. This great man has anything but the face of a man of genius,--and who knows whether posterity will think his deeds betray more than his face? One thing pretty I observed in the garden,--a thick massy wreath of ivy planted on the turf. It looks as if negligently dropped there. Our excursion was to be closed by the sight of Bulstrode, which Repton describes at such length as the model of parks; but this drop is spared you, my poor Julia, for the Duke of Portland has sold it, and the present owner has felled the trees about which Repton is so enthusiastic, ploughed up the park, and pulled down the house to sell the stone. It was a miserable scene of desolation,--made more miserable by the strange dress of the women at work; they were wrapped from top to toe in blood-red cloaks, and looked like an ill-omened assemblage of executioners. _London, Jan. 13th._ By bright gas-light, which is always like a festal illumination here, we drove into town, and as I wished to have an instant contrast with my park-and-garden life, I alighted at Covent Garden to see my first Christmas pantomime. This is a very favourite spectacle in England, particularly with children; so that I was quite in my place. Playwrights and scene-painters take great pains to make every year's wonders exceed the last. Before I bid you good-night I must give you a rhapsodical sketch of the performance. At the rising of the curtain a thick mist covers the stage and gradually rolls off. This is remarkably well managed by means of fine gauze. In the dim light you distinguish a little cottage, the dwelling of a sorceress; in the back-ground a lake surrounded by mountains, some of whose peaks are clothed with snow. All as yet is misty and indistinct;--the sun then rises triumphantly, chases the morning dews, and the hut, with the village in the distance, now appear in perfect outline. And now you behold upon the roof a large cock, who flaps his wings, plumes himself, stretches his neck, and greets the sun with several very natural _Kikerikys_.[40] A magpie near him begins to chatter and to strut about, and to peck at a gigantic tom-cat lying in a niche in the wall, who sleepily stretches himself, cleans his face, and purrs most complacently. This tom-cat is acted with great 'virtuosité' by an actor who is afterwards transformed into Harlequin. The way in which he plays with a melon, the lightness and agility with which he climbs up the chimney and down again, his springs, and all his gesture, are so natural that they could only be acquired by