Ever yours,
Fanny.
King Street, Tuesday, March 7th, 1848.
Indeed, my dear Hal, I was not satisfied, but profoundly dissatisfied, with my singing in Ophelia; but am thankful to say that I did not sing out of tune, which I dreaded doing, from the miserable nervousness I felt about it. I am entirely misplaced in the character, and can do nothing with it that might not be better done by almost any younger woman with a sweet voice and that order of fair beauty which one cannot separate from one's idea of Ophelia.
I have read Stanley's sermon on St. Peter, and am enchanted with it, and more than ever struck with the resemblance, in its general spirit, and even in actual passages, to my friend Mr. Furness's book. The notes and commentary upon the sermon are the part of Stanley's work that show more erudition and literary power than Mr. Furness's treatise contained, but the manner and matter of the writers shows close kindred when treating of the same subjects.
ARRIVAL OF FRENCH EMIGRANTS. We overflow here with anecdotes of the hairbreadth escapes of the French fugitives. Guizot and Madame de Liéven, his dear friend and evil genius, arrived both in London on the same day, having travelled from Paris in the same railroad train as far as Amiens; she with the painter Roberts, passing as his wife, and Guizot so disguised that she did not recognize him, and would not believe Lord Holland when he called upon her on Saturday and told her that Guizot had arrived like herself, and by the same train, the day before. Hotels and private houses are thronged with French and English tumbling over, a perfect stampede, from the other side of the Channel. Lady Dufferin, who during her long stay in Paris made many French friends, is exercising hospitality to the tune of having thirty people in her house in Brook Street.
Charles Greville showed me on Saturday a capital letter of Lord Clarendon's upon the subject of his kingdom [he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at this time], and the probable and possible effects of this French Revolution on your quiet, orderly, well-principled countrymen. He also showed me a letter he had received from E—— from Rome, in which, I think, the account of the pope is that of a man being carried off his legs by the popular exigencies, which he cannot resist and at the same time remain pope—the head of the priestly Roman Catholic Government.
Yesterday came news that Metternich had resigned. If this is true, the forward step Italy is about to take need not, please God! be made in blood and violent social upheaving. I do pray that this news may be true, for it will probably avert a fire-and-sword revolution in the Milanese, and all through Lombardy, in which Piedmont would sympathize too warmly for its own peace and quiet.
Austria, thus deserted by the presiding genius of her hitherto Italian policy, Metternich, will perhaps hesitate to enforce its threatened opposition to the changes which she might have sold at the cost of many lives, but would not have averted, though she overran Italy from end to end with war and desolation.
This retreat of the great political powers of darkness before the advance of freedom in Italy seems to me like a personal happiness to myself. I rejoice unspeakably in it. It is quite another matter in France. It will be another matter here, whenever our turn to be turned upside down or inside out comes.