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consequently, that her Constance, Katherine of Arragon, Volumnia, and Lady Macbeth stood pre-eminent. Lord Byron, I believe, preferred Constance; but the general opinion stamps her Lady Macbeth as the grandest effort of her art; and therefore, as she was the first in her art, as the ne plus ultra of acting. This at least was the opinion of one who admired her with all the fervour of a kindred genius, and could lavish on her praise of such "rich words composed as made the gift more rare." "Of her Lady Macbeth," he says, thing could have been imagined grander,-it was something above nature; it seemed almost as if a being of a superior order had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated on her brow, passion emanated from her breast as from a shrine. In coming on in the sleeping scene, her eyes were open, but their sense was shut; she was like a person bewildered; her lips moved involuntarily; all her gestures seemed mechanical-she glided on and off the stage like an apparition. To have seen her in that character was an event in every one's life never to be forgotten."

By profound and incessant study she had brought her conception and representation of this character to such a pitch of perfection that the imagination could conceive of nothing more magnificent or more finished; and yet she has been heard to say, after playing it for thirty years, that she never read over the part without discovering in it something new.

I am not old enough to remember Mrs. Siddons in her best days. but, judging from my own recollections, I should say that, to hear her read one of Shakspeare's plays, was a higher, a more complete gratification, and a more astonishing display of her powers than her performance of any single character. On the stage she was the perfect actress; when she was reading Shakspeare her profound enthusiastic admiration of the poet, and deep insight into his most hidden beauties, made her almost a poetess, or at least like a priestess full of the god of her idolatry. Her whole soul looked out from her regal brow and effulgent eyes; and then her countenance!--the inconceivable flexibility and musical intonations of her voice! there was no got-up illusion here: no scenes-no trickery of the stage; there needed no sceptred pall-no sweeping train, nor any of the gorgeous accompaniments of tragedy:-SHE was tragedy! When in reading Macbeth she said, "give me the daggers!" they gleamed before our eyes. The witch scenes in the same play she rendered awfully terrific by the magic of looks and tones; she invested the weird sisters with all their own infernal fascinations; they were the serious, poetical, tragical personages which the poet intended them to be, and the wild grotesque horror of their enchantments made the blood curdle. When, in King John, she came to the passage beginning

If the midnight bell,

Did with his iron tongue and brazen note, &c.

I remember I felt every drop of blood pause, and then run backwards through my veins with an overpowering awe and horror. No scenic representation I ever witnessed produced the hundredth part of the effect of her reading Hamlet. This tragedy was the triumph of her art. Hamlet and his mother, Polonius, Ophelia, were all there before us. Those who ever heard her give Ophelia's reply to Hamlet,

Hamlet. I loved you not.

Ophelia. I was the more deceived!

and the lines

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

That suck'd the honey of his music vows, &c.

will never forget their exquisite pathos. What a revelation of love and woe was there!--the very heart seemed to break upon the utterance. She continued to exercise her power of reading and reciting to a late period, even till within a few weeks of her death, although her health had long been in a declining state. She died at length on the 8th of June last, after a few hours of acute suffering. She had lived nearly seventy-six years, of which forty-six were spent in the constant presence and service of the public. She was an honour to her profession, which was more honoured and honourable in her person and family than it ever was before, or will be hereafter, till the stage becomes something very different from what it now is.

And, since it has pleased the newspapers to lament over the misfortune of this celebrated woman, in having survived all her children, &c. &c. it may be interesting to add that, a short time before her death, she was seated in a room in her own house, when about thirty of her young relatives, children, grand-children, nephews and nieces were assembled, and looked on while they were dancing, with great and evident pleasure: and that her surviving daughter, Cecilia Siddons, who has been, for many years, the inseparable friend and companion of her mother, attended upon her with truly filial devotion and reverence to the last moment of existence. Her admirers may, therefore, console themselves with the idea that in " love, obedience, troops of friends," as well as affluence and fame, she had "all that should accompany old age." She died full of years and honours; having enjoyed, in her long life, as much glory and prosperity as any mortal could expect: having imparted more intense and general pleasure than ever mortal did; and having paid the tribute of mortality in such suffering and sorrow as wait on the widowed wife and the bereaved mother. If, in the course of a professional career of unexampled continuance and splendour, the love of praise ever degenerated into the appetite for applause ;-if the habit of exciting and being excited became a mode of existence which wore away at last some of that simplicity of feeling and character which Dr. Johnson acknowledged and admired in her young days;-if the worshipped actress languished out of her atmosphere of incense, is this to be made matter of wonder or of ill-natured comment? Did ever any human being escape more intacte in person and mind from the fiery furnace of popular admiration? Let us remember the severity of the ordeal to which she was exposed; the hard lot of those who pass their lives in the full-noon glare of public observation, where every speck is noted! What a difference too, between the aspiration after immortality and the pursuit of celebrity !-The noise of distant and future fame is like the sound of the far-off sea, and the mingled roll of its multitudinous waves, which, as it swells on the ear, elevates the soul with a sublime emotion; but present and loud applause, flung continually in one's face, is like the noisy dash of the surf upon the rock,-and it requires the firmness of the rock to bear it.

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"These are words that we should read like warnings,
Meekly, as fearing, if we had been tried,
We might have done the same, and thankfully
That such temptation fell not to our lot:
The human heart is evil in itself,

And, like a child, requires restraint and care;
Restraint to keep from wrong, and care to soothe
Its wilder beatings into peace and love."

THE light of two or three pale stars
Is dimly shining through the bars
Of my lone cell, and the cool air
Seems as it loath'd to enter there.
Now are those wan and gloomy hours,
When Night and Day, like struggling powers,
Make the sky cheerless with their strife,
Then most resembling human life:
It suits with me!-ill could I brook
Upon a cloudless heaven to look ;
The calm blue air, the clear sunshine,
Were mockery to gaze like mine;
To watch the sun look bright on me,
Although the last that I shall see.
-Ah! even while I speak, the light
Is breaking beautiful through night.
'Tis all the same! the earth, the sky,
Nothing with me has sympathy!

-The clouds are breaking fast away—
Oh! why art thou so lovely, Day?
Oh! for a morn of clouds and rain,
To shroud and soothe my last of pain.
No-faster the glad sunbeams break-
They will not sorrow for my sake!
-It has been-it will be my fate-
I've lived-I shall die desolate !
-Oh! take your rosary away,
For what are prayers of mine to pray?
For pardon?-if the burning tears
That fed upon my earlier years-
If blasted hopes and ruin'd name,
And all the venom Love lends Shame-
The violent death, and rabble eye,
To look upon its agony;
If these are not enough to win
A pardon for Earth's deadliest sin,
Words will not, cannot'!-never dare
Tell me it may be won by prayer!
The coward prayer, the coward tear,
Not from remorse wrung, but from fear!
-Here still-then, yield my last relief-
My woman's solace-hear my grief.
Come nearer-thou a judge shalt be
Between my misery and me!

"I grew up a neglected child:
The meanest floweret of the wild

July.-VOL. XXXII. NO, CXXVII.

Has far more culture and more care
From summer sun and summer air.*
-My mother, she was laid to rest
Within the green earth's quiet breast;
My father had another bride,
And other children grew beside
The orphan one-his love could be
So much for them-'twas nought for me.
I never mingled in their mirth,

I saw their smiles, but shared them not; And in the circle round the hearth

My very being seem'd forgot.
They call'd me sullen, said my heart
In natural fondness had no part;
For that I sate apart from all,

With cold cheek turn'd to the dark wall.
I hid my face-I could not bear

It should be seen, while tears were there.

"I had a haunt, 'twas by the shade
Wherein my mother's grave was made:
It was a church-yard, small and lone,
Without a monumental stone;

But flowers were planted by each grave,
Sweet, like the thoughts they seem'd to save
From Time's forgetfulness-but one,
One only, mid the sods had none-
Grown with tall weeds, as if the wind
Were the sole mourner it could find,
And in its careless course had brought
Whatever seeds its wild wings caught.
And marvel you I had no pride

To make that tomb like those beside?
-Methought if there my hand should bring
The sunny treasures of the spring,
It would reproach my father's eye,
That long had pass'd it careless by.

"My melancholy childhood gone,
Youth, with its dreamy time, came on;
Affections long repress'd and chill'd,
Days with their own vain fancies fill'd,
Which haunt the heart-what soil was here
For Love's wild growth of hope and fear?
-It matters not my early tale,

My heart was won, my will was frail;
I knew I was not Evelyn's bride,—
But what to me the world beside?
One only voice was in my ear,

I only sought to meet one eye-
And if to me they ever changed,

I knew that I could only die!

"Terrible city!-London, thou
Who liftest like a queen thy brow;
Stern, cold, and proud the night when first
Thy mighty world upon me burst;
Houses, yet none of them my home;

Faces, of which I knew not one;

I felt more than I ever felt-
A stranger-utterly alone;
My very heart within me died,
And close I crouch'd to Evelyn's side;
His soothing words were soft and low,
Such as Love's lip alone can know.
He loved me-ay, loved is the word!
So lightly said, so vainly heard-
But I-the light of heaven was dim
To eyes that only look'd on him;
I listen'd-'twas to hear his voice;
I spoke it was to win his ear;
I watch'd-it was to meet his eye;
I only lived when he was near;
His absence seem'd a void as deep,
As dark as is a dreamless sleep.
And was I happy?-no; still dread
Hung like the sword above my head;
My thoughts to other hopes would roam-
I knew his home was not my home;
I knew his name was not my name,
And I felt insecure through shame.

"Still less it recks how, day by day,
I saw the life of love decay;
The absent look, the careless word,
The anger by a trifle stirr'd,

And found that Evelyn's brow could be
Harsh, though that brow was bent on me.
-Brief be my tale, as was his love-
He, who had call'd on heaven above
To witness every vow he spoke-
May it record the vow he broke !
He loved another-calm and cold,
He wrote farewell!-and sent me gold.
He came not-perhaps he could not bear
To view what he had wrought-despair!

"I thought that I would see his face-
Secret I sought his dwelling-place,
A villa, where the river strays-
I had been there in happier days:
There was one room, whose windows led
To where the turf its carpet spread,
And shrubs and flowers a labyrinth wrought
Of bud and leaf-that room I sought:
"Twas late-I scarce could find my path
By the dim ray the starlight hath:
A lamp was burning in the room,
So faint it scarcely lit the gloom;
Yet lovely seem'd the light-it fell
Upon the face I loved so well.
He'd flung him on a couch to sleep-
Ah! how unequal seem'd our share,
For I was left to watch and weep,

And he lay calmly slumbering there.
How beautiful!-the open brow
Like morning, or like mountain snow;

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