18 February 1833 – 24 February 1833

After breakfast, went to rehearsal; came home and stitched at my Françoise de Foix head-dress. My father is extremely unwell; I scarce think he will be able to get through his part to-night. After dinner, practised, and read a canto in Dante. It pleases me, when I refer to Biagioli's notes, to find that the very lines Alfieri has noted are those under which I have drawn my emphatic pencil marks. At half-past five, went to the theatre. The play was Macbeth, for my benefit: the house was very full, and I played very ill. My father was dreadfully exhausted by his work. I had an interesting discussion with Mr. —— about the costume and acting of the witches in this awful play. I should like to see them acted and dressed a little more like what they should be, than they generally are. It has been always customary,—Heaven only knows why,—to make low comedians act the witches, and to dress them like old fish-women. Instead of the wild unearthly appearance which Banquo describes, and which belongs to their most terrible and grotesquely poetical existence and surroundings, we have three jolly-faced fellows,—whom we are accustomed to laugh at, night after night, in every farce on the stage,—with as due a proportion of petticoats as any woman, letting alone witch, might desire, jocose red faces, peaked hats, and broomsticks, which last addition alone makes their costume different from that of Moll Flagon. If I had the casting of Macbeth, I would give the witches to the first melo-dramatic actors on the stage,—such men as T. P. Cooke, and O. Smith, who understand all that belongs to picturesque devilry to perfection,—and give them such dresses as, without ceasing to be grotesque, should be a little more fanciful, and less ridiculous than the established livery; something that would accord a little better with the blasted heath, the dark fungus-grown wood, the desolate misty hill-side, and the flickering light of the caldron cave. * * * * * * * * * *

After breakfast, —— and Mr. —— came. —— gave me the words and tune of a bewitching old English ballad. Mr. —— called and sat some time with me: I like him mainly,—he's very pleasant and clever. That handsome creature, Mme. ——, called with her daughter and her son-in-law. Mr. —— and —— dined with us. After dinner, came to my own room, sang over ——'s ballad, and amused myself with writing one of my own. At half-past five, took coffee, and off to the theatre. The house was very full; play, the Stranger: I didn't play well: I'd a gown on that did not fit me, to which species of accident our art is marvellously subservient, for a tight arm-hole shall mar the grandest passage in Queen Constance, and too long or too short a skirt keep one's heart cold in the balcony scene in Juliet. Came home; supped; finished marking the Winter's Tale. What a dense fool that fat old Johnson must have been in matters of poetry! his notes upon Shakspeare make one swear, and his summing up of the Winter's Tale is worthy of a newspaper critic of the present day,—in spirit, I mean, not language; Dr. Johnson always wrote good English.—What dry, and sapless, and dusty earth his soul must have been made of, poor fat man! After all, 'tis even a greater misfortune than fault to be so incapable of beauty. * * * * * * * * * * BALLAD. The Lord's son stood at the clear spring head, The May on the other side, "And stretch me your lily hand," he said, "For I must mount and ride. "And waft me a kiss across the brook, And a curl of your yellow hair; Come summer or winter, I ne'er shall look Again on your eyes so fair. "Bring me my coal-black steed, my squire, Bring Fleetfoot forth!" he cried; "For three-score miles he must not tire, To bear me to my bride. "His foot must be swift, though my heart be slow; He carries me towards my sorrow; To the Earl's proud daughter I made my vow, And I must wed her to-morrow." The Lord's son stood at the altar stone,— The Earl's proud daughter near: "And what is that ring you have gotten on, That you kiss so oft and so dear? "Is it a ring of the yellow gold, Or something more precious and bright? Give me that ring in my hand to hold, Or I plight ye no troth to-night." "It is not a ring of the yellow gold, But something more precious and bright; But never shall hand, save my hand, hold This ring by day or night." "And now I am your wedded wife, Give me the ring, I pray."— "You may take my lands, you may take my life, But never this ring away." They sat at the board; and the lady bride Red wine in a goblet pour'd; "And pledge me a health, sweet sir," she cried, "My husband and my lord." The cup to his lips he had scarcely press'd, When he gasping drew his breath, His head sank down on his heaving breast, And he said, "It is death! it is death!— "Oh bury me under the gay green shaw By the brook, 'neath the heathery sod, Where last her blessed eyes I saw, Where her blessed feet last trod!"

We came home at two. —— and the horses were waiting for me: we mounted and rode down to the Hoboken ferry, where we crossed. The day was like an early day in spring in England; a day when the almond trees would all have been in flower, the hawthorn hedges putting forth their tender green and brown shoots, and the primroses gemming the mossy roots of the trees by the water-courses. The spring is backwarder here a good deal than with us: to be sure, it is sudden compared with ours,—as my poetising friend hath it,— "Not with slow steps, in smiles, in tears advancing, But with a bound, like Indian girls in dancing." I do not like this: I like to linger over the sweet hourly and daily fufilment of hope, which the slow progress of vegetation in my own dear country allows one full enjoyment of; to watch the leaf from the bark, the blossom from the bud; the delicate, pale-white, peeping heads of the hawthorn, to the fragrant, snowy, delicious flush of flowering; the downy green clusters of small round buds on the apple trees, to the exquisite rosy-tinted clouds of soft blossoms waving against an evening sky. The melted snow had made the roads all but impassable; however, the day was delightfully mild and sunny, and therefore we did not get chilled by the very temperate rate at which we were obliged to proceed. We turned off to look at the Turtle Pavilion, and, pursuing the water's edge, got up upon a species of high dyke between some marshes that open into the river. Our path, however, was presently intercepted by a stile, and as the horses were not quite of the sort one could have risked a leap with, —— got off and endeavoured to lead his charger round the edge of the steep bank, but the brute refused that road, and we were forced to turn back; and, after floundering about over some of the roughest worst ground imaginable, we e'en went out of the Hoboken domain at the gate where we entered, and pursued that beautiful road overlooking the Hudson, under that fine range of cliffs which are the first idea, as it were, of the Palisadoes. We took the lower road down into the glen below Weehawk. The sun shone gloriously: the little fairy stream that owns this narrow glade was singing and dancing along its beautiful domain with a sweet gleesome voice, and a succession of little sparkling breaks and eddies that looked like laughter. We left the muddy road, and turned our horses into the stream; but its bed was very stony and uneven, and we were obliged to turn out of it again. We rode like very impudent persons up to the house on the height. The house itself is too unsheltered for comfort either in summer or winter, but the view from its site is beautiful, and we had it in perfection to-day. Standing at an elevation of more than a hundred feet from the river, we looked down its magnificent, broad, silvery avenue, to the Narrows—that rocky gate that opens towards my home. New York lay bright and distinct on the opposite shore, glittering like a heap of toys in the sunny distance: the water towards Sandy Hook was studded with sails; and far up on the other side the river rolled away among shores that, even in this wintry time of bare trees and barren earth, looked gay and lovely in the sunshine. We turned down again; but after crossing the bridge over the pretty brook, we took an upper path to the right, and riding through some leafless, warm, sunny woodlands, joined the road that leads to the Weehawken height, and so returned to New York. On our way, discussing the difference between religion as felt by men and women, —— agreed with me, that hardly one man out of five thousand held any distinct entire and definite religious belief. He said that religion was a sentiment, and that, as regarded all creeds, there was no midway with them; that faith or utter disbelief were the only alternatives; for that displacing one jot of any of them made the whole totter,—which last is, in some measure, true, but I do not think it is true that religion is only a sentiment. There are many reasons why women are more religious than men. Our minds are not generally naturally analytical—our education tends to render them still less so: 'tis seldom in a woman's desire (because seldom in her capacity) to investigate the abstract bearings of any metaphysical subject. Our imaginations are exceedingly sensitive, our subservience to early impressions, and exterior forms, proportionate; and our habits of thought, little enlarged by experience, observation, or proper culture, render us utterly incapable of almost any logical train of reasonings. With us, I think, therefore, faith is the only secure hold; for disbelief, acting upon mental constructions so faulty and weak, would probably engender insanity, or a thousand species of vague, wild, and mischievous enthusiasms. I believe, too, that women are more religious than men, because they have warmer and deeper affections. There is nothing surely on earth that can satisfy and utterly fulfil the capacity for loving which exists in every woman's nature. Even when her situation in life is such as to call forth and constantly keep in exercise the best affections of her heart, as a wife, and a mother, it still seems to me as if more would be wanting to fill the measure of yearning tenderness, which, like an eternal fountain, gushes up in every woman's heart; therefore I think it is that we turn, in the plenitude of our affections, to that belief which is a religion of love, and where the broadest channel is open to receive the devotedness, the clinging, the confiding trustfulness, which are idolatry when spent upon creatures like ourselves, but become a holy worship when offered to Heaven. Nor is it only from the abundance and overflowing of our affections that we are devout; 'tis not only from our capacity of loving, but also from our capacity of suffering, that our piety springs. Woman's physical existence, compared with that of man, is one of incessant endurance. This in itself begets a necessity for patience, a seeking after strength, a holding forth of the hands for support; thus, the fragile frame, the loving heart, and the ignorant mind, are in us sources of religious faith. But it often happens that those affections, so strong, so deep, so making up the sum and substance of female existence, instead of being happily employed, as I have supposed above, are converted into springs of acute suffering. These wells of feeling hidden in the soul, upon whose surface the slightest smile of affection falls like sunlight, but whose very depths are stirred by the breath of unkindness, are too often un-visited by the kindly influence of kindred sympathies, and go wearing their own channels deeper, in silence and in secrecy, and in infinite bitterness,—undermining health, happiness, the joy of life, and making existence one succession of burden-bearing days, and toilsome, aching, heavy hours. It is in this species of blight, which falls upon many women, that any religious faith becomes a refuge and a consolation, more especially that merciful and compassionate faith whose words are, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." To that rest betakes itself the wearied spirit, the wounded heart; and it becomes a blessing beyond all other blessings; a source of patience, of fortitude, of hope, of strength, of endurance; a shelter in the scorching land,—a spring of water in the wilderness. * * * * * * * * * *