drama is banished; because, to give its former pleasure, every word must be distinctly heard, every gesture accurately perceived. Music triumphantly reigns over the subject reason of the country, and her handmaid, procession, fills her court with endless and glaring frippery. While I am writing this paragraph, a singer is absolutely deliberating whether he shall accept the sum of two thousand five hundred pounds for five weeks' performance.

But to return to the regular course of this narrative. Mrs. Siddons did not at all avoid the closest comparison with her great rival. Accordingly, on the 22d December, for her own benefit, she appeared for the first time in the character of Lady Randolph. I cannot say that she never saw Mrs. Crawford act the part: she however played it, to all appearance, purely from her own conception. I remember the curiosity I felt to see her, and I still feel how amply that curiosity was repaid. As a preliminary remark, the reader will allow me to say, that this great actress always impressed you powerfully with the scope of the character she performed, the moment you first beheld her. Her deportment conveyed the mind and circumstances of the being she represented. In Lady Randolph she wore the traces of sorrows that admitted of no cure. In a viduary state, she had accepted the protection of a second husband. Her affections had been buried in the grave of the first. I was struck with the profound melancholy of her speech to Anna.

"Didst thou not ask, what had my sorrows been

If I in early youth, had lost a husband?

In the cold bosom of the earth is lodg'd,

Mangl'd with wounds, the husband of my youth;
And in some cavern of the ocean lies
My child and his."

There was a very fine moral impression in the insisting upon sincerity, a little farther on, as the first of virtues.

In the second act nothing ever surpassed, in grace and benignity, her attention to young Norval's narrative, The comment she makes, upon the change of his fortune, and the opening horizon of his prospects, was closed sublimely by the two lines,

"On this my mind reflected while you spake,

And bless'd the wonder-working hand of Heaven."

And the comparison of herself with the supposed happy mother of Norval,

L

"Whilst I-to a dead husband bore a son,
And to the roaring waters gave my child."

In the following scene with Glenalvon, the amazing intelligence of her look, and the action of her right arm, when she uttered

"I have not found so: thou art KNOWN to me,”

were a volume of communication to a base and mastered spirit.

The third act introduced old Norval; and the utmost anxiety was felt around me, as to the mode in which she would deliver the famous

"Was he alive?"

Shakspeare shall say how. As one, then,

"Who almost dead for breath, had scarcely more
Than would make up the question."

Her admirers seemed to regret, that she had lost the great burst but she had only changed its place; and pierced every bosom with the tones in which she exclaimed,

"Inhuman that thou art!

How could'st THOU kill, what waves and tempests spar'd?"

The triumphant burst at last,

""Tis he! 'tis he himself! it is my son !"

only her own organ could convey.

The fourth act had its full share of these beautiful and finished efforts. For instance, when showing the jewels, which Norval recognizes to have been his father's. The mournful iteration of the word, and the pathos that succeeded it, were modulated with the truest ear, or rather the keenest feeling in the world.

"Thy father's, say'st thou ?-ah! they WERE thy father's." Her admiration of the personal beauty of Douglas,

"Yet in my prime, I equall'd not thy father;"

had a singular attraction, coming from a woman so grand and yet so lovely. Mrs. Siddons once directed my atten

tion to the somewhat similar description of Bertram's beauty, by Helena, in "All's well that ends well."

In the fifth act, of highest value were the tender cautions, to repress the youthful, headlong valour of her son.

"Lord Randolph, hear me! all shall be thine own;

But spare! oh spare my son!"

gave almost insupportable agony to the audience-this, followed by the exulting transport, "He lives! he lives!" were her triumph and nature's.

But the gloomy absorption that followed his death

"Of thee, I think not; what have I to do
With thee, or any thing?—my son! my son !

MY BEAUTIFUL! my brave!"

It is worthy of record that the word beautiful, from Mrs. Siddons, had all the fascination it describes. She had the feeling of an artist, it seemed, combined with that of a mother. The concluding line of the character, as Mrs. Siddons gave it, was

Mr. Steevens ridiculed it successfully; but the actress who prefers Home's "make a woman bold," will find her exit somewhat weakened by it. I have thus attempted to mark the most striking, or most applauded passages of the performance; but I am sensible that the great charm of all, which may be admired, but produces no applause, is that unity of the character, that absence of self, that fixed attention to the whole business of the scene, which were peculiar to this great actress. Though nearly half the season was over, she repeated Lady Randolph six times. Brereton acted Douglas; Bensley, Norval; and Palmer, Glenalvon.

The reader will not be displeased to find here the first cast of this play in London. Barry was the Douglas; Sparks, the Norval; Smith, Glenalvon; Ridout, Lord Randolph ; the Lady Randolph, Mrs. Woffington; Anna, Mrs. Vincent. -14th March, 1757.

CHAPTER VII.

Mrs. Abington.-Her Lady Betty Modish.-Lillo.-Comedy of Reparation. Mrs. Cargill, lost in the Pacquet, returning from India.-Details of that Event.-Mrs. Siddons in the Countess of Salisbury.-Hall Hartshorn, whether the real Author of that Play.-Her next choice, Thompson's Sigismunda.-The Prologue to this Play examined.—Mrs. Siddons's performance of the Heroine, its Beauties.-Exhibition of her Portrait in the Tragic Muse.-Mr. Kemble never sat to Sir Joshua Reynolds.—Compared at that time with his Sister.-His Habits and Studies.-Love of Accuracy.-Macnally's Robin Hood.-Commemoration of Handel.-Cowper's Censure Controverted.-Ardour of Mrs. Siddons.-Mrs. Abington.-Lord Mansfield.-Macklin.The great Decision as to the Rights of Audience and Actor.

MRS. Abington, after the Christmas holidays, made her first appearance for the season in Lady Betty Modish, in the Careless Husband. In my opinion nothing in the art ever went beyond this performance. It is not a little singular, that this great actress never should have excited an imitator. Of all the Lady Bettys of the time, no one reminded me that she had ever seen her act or heard her speak; and this, by the way, is a solitary instance. Every other excellent performer was admired and copied by the juvenile candidate for fame. Her taste, her ease, her grace, her point, her humour, were unattainable.

On the 10th of February, Lillo's most horrible tragedy of the Fatal Curiosity was brought out, augmented by Mr. Mackenzie in a style sufficiently similar. Henderson and Mrs. Stephen Kemble rendered the audience completely miserable.

Miles Peter Andrews, more fashionable as a writer of Epilogues for the plays of others, than for his own comedies, produced at Drury Lane, on the 14th of February, a play called Reparation. This reparation is the legal marriage, in the fifth act, of a most amiable woman, who had been the victim of a pretended marriage, before the commencement of the play. Mrs. Siddons conferred the said character upon Miss Farren, who struggled through five acts of

very heavy and disgusting incidents: the author was too fond of dishonourable attachments; for that to which I have alluded was not the only one in the play. Among a crowd of indiscretions, the author had the folly to allude to what was at that time called back stairs influence. In other words, his majesty's change of his confidential servants. The expressions used begat a contest, and the author did not suffer by his own explosion, which, considering his profession, a gunpowder merchant, was beyond all reasonable. calculation. Perhaps his politics saved his play.

Captain Topham wrote both prologue and epilogue, replete with the usual points of the time; and, indeed, they are by no means unentertaining,-the taste for mature beauty the luxuries of debate the India Interest-Pacchierotti-Vestris-the dieu-and the dogs of the dance.

About the end of the month of February, Mrs. Cargill perished off Scilly, in the Nancy pacquet, returning from the East Indies. She was the original Clara in the Duenna; was a very delightful singer, and one of the most captivating women of her time: but the head was not strong enough to regulate the conduct of the charmer, and she occasionally filled the page of scandal.

It may, perhaps, be proper to exhibit a fuller account of her conduct, and her fate, for the chance of recalling others to a just sense of their danger.

This lovely creature was found floating, in her chemise, as she had lain in her bed, and in her arms, inseparably clasped, the infant of which she had been delivered. The maternal instinct had not yielded even to death itself.

By a very early display of vocal and even comic talent, she had become an amazing favourite with the public. She increased in beauty as she advanced in her profession, and became an object of attraction to the dissolute. She at length eloped from her father's house, and I well knew the man who triumphed in her seduction. Her maiden name was Brown, and her father was a respectable tradesman, who was made miserable by her indiscretion. At length, tired even of disorder, she married; but her choice was, as might be expected, little advantageous to her; and she became a voluntary exile, in consequence, from her native land, and arrived in India, with a view to professional exertion, in a country that has wealth, at all events, to lavish upon amusement. acted at Bombay several nights, with such a company as could be got together, and even went so far as to try the Grecian Daughter for her own benefit. It was solely for her own benefit, for she was totally inadequate to such a charac

She