highness has greatly lamented that you should have so far forgotten yourself as to use the expression you did on the Stein to any one; but he mcst unequivocally acquits you of knowing that it was the d―ke of Yk to whom you addressed it; and of course of the least disrespect to the family of the sovereign. He at the same time thinks that you were extremely ill used, and that considering the circumstances in which you were placed, it would be cruel injustice to hold you responsible for any rash expression you might have uttered. I have further to mention that with this exception I have made, your conduct on that occasion was extremely pleasing to his highness, and such as it will ever be his pride to see a Briton display on such occasions; and I can assure you in addition that his highness will omit no fair opportunity of advancing your interests."

The reader has already been told that the interest of the royal family had been engaged for Mr. Hodgkinson, and that even the first personage of it, had agreed to do him a singular favour on his first appearance in London. As every one who knows any thing of the history of the stage, and of the lives of actors, must be aware that something more than his mere professional merit was requisite to procure him so distinguished a favour, the reader will no doubt expect to have that particular event of his life circumstantially accounted for In this as in several other parts of this biographical sketch, the writer has been obliged to work upon materials extremely loose, and often imperfect and deficient in connection. His bases being such facts as his memory supplied from desultory conversations with Hodgkinson, and the stories and anecdotes upon which in those conversations the latter loved to dilate, and which indeed he frequently repeated. To many of these, the connecting circumstances of time and place were wanting; nor had the writer a date of any importance to direct him, or to take as a landmark to guide him in his way. These deficiencies however he has indefatigably laboured to supply by seeking information from every intelligent person he had reason to believe was acquainted with the subject. Of the various relations and anecdotes given by Hodgkinson himself, he has not the least reason to question the fidelity, since there are few of them which he has not heard him repeat several times without the least variation, and of those few there were not above one or two that were not well known to persons who had them from H. himself long

before the writer became acquainted with him, and that did not exactly coincide with general collateral circumstances, which all those persons knew to be true. It is from information collected in this twofold manner, the writer has been enabled to gather a tolerably satisfactory account of the origin of that very influence to which Hodgkinson owed the recommendations alluded to, and other interest of such consequence and magnitude, as could not have failed to give him a decided advantage over any actor of equal talents and pretensions in Great Britain, if a fatality which cannot be too much deplored by his friends, had not beguiled him away from the fair high road to fame and fortune which lay before him. What actor so young and originally so unfriended and unconnected ever looked to the theatres of the British metropolis under such advantages as these: not only a capital engagement from the managers, but the sovereign's promise to bespeak the play for his first appearance, and Mrs. Siddons's voluntary assurance to play on that occasion, lady Randolph in the play, and Catharine in the afterpiece to Hodgkinson's Douglas and Petruchio. With talents and powers less than his, such an outset was an assurance of a fortunate careerBut it pleased fate to rule it otherwise and the die is irretrievably cast forever.-Now to account for all this!

Conversing with this writer on the subject of his moving from the English to the American stage, Hodgkinson, adverted to the urgent nature of his motives, and in stating the advantages he had sacrificed to it, mentioned the entire loss of the favour of a great lady, who had given him her patronage, and actually allowed him two hundred pounds a year; both of which she had latterly given him to understand he would forever forfeit, if he proceeded farther in his determination to leave England, and did not relinquish the arrangements he had made for the purpose. Upon this writer's disclosing a supposition that the penchant of the lady was an affair of love or gallantry, Hodgkinson declared it was no such thingthat she was a single lady of high rank, character, family and fortune that it was purely a beneficent and honourable purpose on her part to protect and aid what she thought unfriended merit, and that he never approached her but at that humble distance which the dignity of her character, and the pride annexed to it, prescribed to persons in his situation. This lady had gained him a host of sup

porters, and among the rest the prince of Wales, and some others of the royal family. The writer remembers that once when he touched upon the subject jocosely, Hodgkinson replied with a solemnity of expression which marked the deep sentiments of gratitude, reverential awe, and affection, with which the conduct of the lady had impressed him; he said that she was perhaps the only subject on which he would not allow even a friend so much regarded to speak lightly; that her name was never to be mentioned but with reverence, and that to the end of his life she must remain, next to God, the first object of his respect and admiration. "Sometime or other on a future day," he continued, "you shall know all about it, and see her letters, and I rely upon it that you will admire and venerate her with your whole soul."

Thus far the writer learned from Hodgkinson himself, at Charleston. Since his arrival in this city he has procured from an intimate bosom friend of the deceased, who lived in his house, and was often admitted to a participation in his secret thoughts, a more particular account of the lady adverted to, and her primary motives for patronising our hero. This gentleman who had seen the letters alluded to, informed the writer that like many other ladies in the world, she had been fond of writing; so that if she were not of too exalted a character to be treated with common-place flippancy, it might be said of her that she was possessed of that particular evil commonly called the cacoethes scribendi, and like most of those who are so had often the mortification to find that the opinion of others did not come up to her own estimate of her productions. She had with infinite pains and attentive reading, collating, comparing, and transcribing, altered one of Shakspeare's plays, and used all the means which her wealth and influence supplied to have it acted; but some how or other, managers and actors all seemed to have conspired against her play and concurred in throwing impediments in its way to public exhibition. In one of those attempts Hodg

kinson came across the piece, and whether it was that it really had merit, or that he was then guided by the same liberal spirit and generous determination to give every person and every performance a fair chance with the public, which governed him in all transactions of the kind in this country, he declared himself warmly in favour of the good lady's play, carried it through, and made a very fine piece of acting of the hero. In the fulness of her gratitude and pride

she adopted our hero to her patronage, allowed him two hundred a year, and without ever speaking to him but at a reserved distance, or seeing him but in the presence of her relatives, she promised that her favours should increase with his good conduct, that if he maintained the reputation of a man of honour and probity, he and his should inherit forever an estate in Wales of more than the yearly amount she allowed him, and that she would in the meantime use all her influence to advance his interests.

Here we find our hero at the very acme of his fortune. Heavens! what prospects were now before him.-But all were lostabandoned-sacrificed to one imprudent whim. Instead of going to London, and answering the hopes of his friends, the expectations of his exalted patroness Mrs. Siddons, making good there the great promise of his talents, and inheriting the honourable bounty of his benefactress, he set off to America to try new fortunes, and experience such new fate as chance and his own labours might provide for him.

(To be continued.)

ANECDOTES OF THOMAS WESTON, COMEDIAN.

To those who delight to observe the efforts of the human mind, in whatever way they may exhibit themselves, it has ever been a painful reflection that the man of genius, who devotes his talents to the histrionic art, when he dies, leaves no memento behind, except in the memory of his cotemporaries, of the high excellence to which those talents had arrived. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the architect, raise lasting monuments, that bear testimony to the combinations of the mind by which they were conceived. The actor, on the contrary, in the grave to which his dust is committed, finds a grave for his talents.

The same fate, indeed, attends all those, whose powers of mind are exhibited in combination with their bodily faculties.When Orpheus dies his lyre lies unstrung.

It is true that duration is itself but relative, and that time is the great, the universal destroyer. Phidias, Zeuxis, Raphael, Homer, Milton, nay Shakspeare himself, all must share the fate which that wonderful poet has so sublimely described. Like his cloud-capped towers, genius itself must dissolve and

"Leave not a wreck behind: We are such stuff

"As dreams are made on, and our little life

“Is rounded with a sleep."

But there is a contrast, and a feeling, in the fate of the man who, at once, combines and exerts his mental and bodily faculties: especially of the actor. The pleasure he gives is so vivid, nay sometimes so exquisite, that to recollect it must so shortly cease, is a pain from which the mind would gladly escape. The applause, too, which he receives, comes in a more open, decided, and powerful manner than there is any opportunity of announcing, to genius that exerts itself wholly in seclusion: and the grandeur of this applause does but make its loss the more sêverely felt: each touch of the sculptor's chissel, each stroke of the pencil of the painter, is not seen, understood, and admired by assembled multitudes, by whom it may instantly be repaid with the thunder of applause. Even the most successful dramatic author is obliged to share a divided fame with the actor.Ah, that the noble touches of his art so soon should perish!

It still would increase this misfortune, should no cotemporary be found to pay the poor tribute of praise so highly deserved: or, if that praise be bestowed, if it be given in a vague, insufficient, and even derogatory manner.

This, in a peculiar degree, has been the fate of Thomas Weston. Never, while I live, can I forget the impression which this extraordinary actor nightly made, not only upon me, but, upon all who saw him, in every character that he undertook, after his fame was established.

The particulars of his life, which I here communicate are derived from a pamphlet entitled MEMOIRS OF THOMAS WESTON, printed for Bladon in 1796. The facts contained in this pamphlet are so far valuable as that they belong to a man so extraordinary, and as they afford some of the means of extending his memory to posterity,