profession, some one or other of her splendid gifts would have been misplaced or dormant. It was her especial good fortune, and not less that of the time in which she lived, that this wonderful combination of mental powers and external graces, was fully and completely developed by the circumstances in which she was placed. 1 "With the most commanding beauty of face and form, and varied grace of action; with the most noble combination of features, and extensive capability of expression in each of them; with an unequalled genius for her art, the utmost patience in study, and the strongest ardour of feeling; there was not a passion which she could not delineate; not the nicest shade, not the most delicate modification of passion, which she could not seize with philosophical accuracy, and render with such immediate force of nature and truth, as well as precision, that what was the result of profound study and unwearied practice, appeared like sudden inspiration. There was not a height of grandeur to which she could not soar, nor a darkness of misery to which she could not descend; not a chord of feeling, from the sternest to the most delicate, which she could not cause to vibrate at her will. She had reached that point of perfection in art, where it ceases to be art, and becomes a second nature. She had studied most profoundly the powers and capabilities of language; so that the most critical sagacity could not have suggested a delicacy of emphasis, by which the meaning of the author might be more distinctly conveyed, or a shade of intonation by which the sentiment could be more fully, or more faithfully expressed. While other performers of the past or present time, have made approaches to excellence, or attained it now and then, Mrs. Siddons alone was pronounced faultless; and, in her, the last generation witnessed what we shall not see in ours;—no, nor our children after us;—that amazing union of splendid intellectual powers, with unequalled charms of person, which, in the tragic department of her art, realized the idea of perfection."

Such was the magnificent portrait drawn of Mrs. Siddons twenty years ago; and it will be admitted by those who remember her, and must be believed by those who do not, that in this case, eulogy could not wander into exaggeration, nor enthusiasm be exalted beyond the bounds of truth.

I have heard people most unreasonably surprised or displeased, because this exceeding dignity of demeanour was not confined to the stage, but was carried into private life. Had it been merely conventional,—a thing put on and put off,—it might have been so; but the grandeur of her mind, and the light of her glorious beauty, were not as a diadem and robe for state occasions only; her's was not only dignity of manner and person, it was moral and innate, and, I may add, hereditary. Mrs. Siddons, with all her graces of form and feature, her magnificence of deportment, her deep-toned, measured voice, and impressive enunciation, was in reality a softened reflection of her more stern, stately, majestic mother, whose genuine loftiness of spirit and of bearing, whose rare beauty, and imperious despotism of character, have often been described to me as absolutely awful,—even her children trembled in her presence.

"All the Kembles," said Sir Thomas Lawrence, "have historical faces;" and for several generations their minds seem to have been cast in a poetical mould. It has, however, been disputed, whether Mrs. Siddons possessed genius. Whether genius be exclusively defined as the creative and inventive faculty of the soul, or taken, in its usual acceptation, as "a mind of large general faculties, accidentally determined to some particular direction," I think she did possess it in both senses. The grand characteristic of her mind was power, but it was power of a very peculiar kind: it was slowly roused—slowly developed—not easily moved; her perceptions were not rapid, nor her sensations quick; she required time for every thing,—time to think, time to comprehend, time to speak. There was nothing superficial about her; no vivacity of manner; to petty gossip she would not descend, and evil-speaking she abhorred; she cared not to shine in general conversation. Like some majestic "Argosie," bearing freight of precious metal, she was a-ground and cumbrous and motionless among the shallows of common life; but set her upon the deep waters of poetry and passion—there was her element—there was her reign. Ask her an opinion, she could not give it you till she had looked on the subject, and considered it on every side,—then you might trust to it without appeal. Her powers, though not easily put in motion, were directed by an incredible energy; her mind, when called to action, seemed to rear itself up like a great wave of the sea, and roll forwards with an irresistible force. This prodigious intellectual power was one of her chief characteristics. Another was truth, which in the human mind is generally allied with power. It is, I think, a mistaken idea, that habits of impersonation on the stage tend to impair the sincerity or the individuality of a character. If any injury is done in this way, it is by the continual and strong excitement of the vanity, the dependence on applause, which in time may certainly corrode away the integrity of the manner, if not of the mind. It is difficult for an admired actress not to be vain, and difficult for a very vain person to be quite unaffected, on or off the stage; it is, however, certain that some of the truest, most natural persons I ever met with in my life, were actresses. In the character of Mrs. Siddons, truth, and a reverence for truth, were commensurate with her vast power: Heaven is not farther removed from earth than she was from falsehood. Allied to this conscientious turn was her love of order. She was extremely punctual in all her arrangements; methodical and exact in every thing she did; circumstantial and accurate in all she said. In little and in great things, in the very texture and constitution of her mind, she was integrity itself: "It was," (said one of her most intimate friends,) "a mind far above the average standard, not only in ability, but in moral and religious qualities; that these should have exhausted themselves in the world of fiction, may be regretted in reference to her individual happiness, but she certainly exercised, during her reign, a most powerful moral influence:—she excited the nobler feelings and higher faculties of every mind which came in contact with her own. I speak with the deepest sense of personal obligation: it was at a very early age that she repeated to me, in a manner and tone which left an indelible impression,

and I never knew her to omit an opportunity of making her fine genius minister to piety and virtue." Now what are the bravos of a whole theatre,

compared to such praise as this?

"Her mind" (again I am enabled to give the very words of one who knew her well) "was a perfect mirror of the sublime and beautiful; like a lake that reflected only the heavens above, or the summits of the mountains around, nothing