A mild, showery day. The morning was completely broken up with visits and with the departure of our friends for Southampton. Mrs Adams went with the party to see them embark tomorrow, after which she returns with Mr and Mrs Sidney Brooks. I was constantly interrupted with company. Mr Corwin came to talk about purchases of cloth and blankets for the government, the same sort of errand with which Mr George B Smith was charged the other day. I answered professing my entire ignorance of all such things as contracts, and my aversion to any connection with questions of pubic money. In the afternoon Mr la Fuente came, and after starting conversation he very calmly proceeded to smoke a cigar. He had nothing new excepting the notice published in the papers that the agreement to intervene in Mexican affairs had been signed on Thursday, in London, by the representatives of the three powers. He asked if I had seen Lord Russell to ask for a copy. I said no. I had thoughts of requesting an interview on other matters, and introducing the subject incidentally. He hoped I would; but I imagine there will be no necessity, as the project will doubtless be made public, very soon. The truth is that Mexico is powerless in the hands of the sovereigns, and he has nothing to do but to submit. In the evening I and the two children went to the Princess Theatre to see Othello performed by Mr Fletcher, the same gentleman who read Hamlet at Miss Coutts’s in May last. The entire piece was gotten up far better than I ever saw it before. The scenery was beautiful and the minor part all well sustained. Mr Fechter seems to me much as he did when he read, strong in a few scenes, but weak in others. He intones his lines very much as he might those of Racine, and his foreign account gives an addition to the defect. The finest scene was that between Othello and Iago, in which the first start is given to the former’s jealousy. Iago was deliberate and calm but a little wooden. Desdemona was very tolerable. Cassio performed by Mr Jordan, an old acquaintance in America. Roderigo a small part, but very well conceived by Mr Shore. I was much interested in the drama, thought it is never an agreeable thing to me to see.272