If it's a failure, there will be the comfort of having made a worthy effort, of having done it as well as I could.

Write soon to me, and love us both constantly, as we do you.
Your ever affectionate BA.
* * * * * _To Mrs.Jameson_ [Paris]: May 2, 1856 [postmark].
My dearest Mona Nina,--It's very pleasant always to get letters from you, and such kind dear letters, showing that you haven't broken the tether-strings in search of 'pastures new,' weary of our cropped grass.
As for news, you have most of the persons upon whom you care for gossip in your hand now--Mrs.Sartoris, Madame Viardot, Lady Monson, and the Ristori herself.

Robert went to see her twice, because Lady Monson led him by the hand kindly, and was charmed; thought the Medee very fine, but won't join in the cry about miraculous genius and Rachel out-Racheled.

He thinks that as far as the highest and largest development of sensibility can go, she is very great; but that for those grand and sudden _apercus_ which have distinguished actors--such as Kean, for instance--he does not acknowledge them in her.

You have heard perhaps how Dickens and others, Macready among the rest, depreciated her.