our fancy as one habitually elevated above the sphere of familiar life,—

Who was it?—(I think Northcote the painter,) who said he had seen a group of young ladies of rank, Lady Fannys and Lady Marys, peeping through the half-open door of a room where Mrs. Siddons was sitting, with the same timidity and curiosity as if it had been some preternatural being,—much more than if it had been the queen: which I can easily believe. I remember that the first time I found myself in the same room with Mrs. Siddons, (I was then about twenty,) I gazed on her as I should have gazed at one of the Egyptian pyramids—nay, with a deeper awe, for what is material and physical immensity, compared with moral and poetical grandeur? I was struck with a sensation which made my heart pause, and rendered me dumb for some minutes; and when I was led into conversation with her, my first words came faltering and thick,—which never certainly would have been the case in presence of the autocratrix of all the Russias. The greatest, the noblest in the land approached her with a deference not unmingled with a shade of embarrassment, while she stood in regal guise majestic, with the air of one who bestowed and never received honour. 5 Nor was this feeling of her power, which was derived, partly from her own peculiar dignity of deportment, partly from her association with all that was grand, poetical, terrible, confined to those who could appreciate the full measure of her endowments. Every member of that public, whose idol she was, from the greatest down to the meanest, felt it more or less. I knew a poor woman who once went to the house of Mrs. Siddons to be paid by her daughter for some embroidery. Mrs. Siddons happened to be in the room, and the woman perceiving who it was, was so overpowered, that she could not count her money, and scarcely dared to draw her breath. "And when I went away, ma'am," added she, in describing her own sensations, "I walked all the way down the street, feeling myself a great deal taller." This was the same unconscious feeling of the sublime, which made Bouchardon say that, after reading the Iliad, he fancied himself seven feet high.

She modelled very beautifully, and in this talent, which was in a manner intuitive, she displayed a creative as well as an imitative power. Might we not say that in the peculiar character of her genius—in the combination of the very real with the very ideal, of the demonstrative and the visionary, of vastness and symmetry, of the massive material and the grand unearthly forms into which it shaped itself—there was something analogous to sculpture? At all events, it is the opinion of many who knew her, that if she had not been a great actress she would have devoted herself to sculpture. She was never so happy as when occupied with her modelling tools; she would stand at her work eight hours together, scarcely turning her head. Music she passionately loved: in her younger days her voice in singing was exquisitely sweet and flexible. She would sometimes compose verses, and sing them to an extemporaneous air; but I believe she did not perform on any instrument.

To complete this sketch I shall add an outline of her professional life.

Mrs. Siddons was born in 1755. She might be said, almost without metaphor, to have been "born on the stage." All the family, I believe, for two or three generations, had been players. In her early life she endured many vicissitudes, and was acquainted with misery and hardship in many repulsive forms. On this subject she had none of the pride of a little mind; but alluded to her former situation with perfect simplicity. The description in Mrs. Inchbald's Memoirs of "Mrs. Siddons singing and mending her children's clothes," is from the life, and charming as well as touching, when we consider her peculiar character and her subsequent destinies. She was in her twenty-first year when she made her first attempt in London, (for it was but an attempt,) in the character of Portia. She also appeared as Lady Anne in Richard III. and in comedy as Mrs. Strickland to Garrick's Ranger. She was not successful: Garrick is said to have been jealous of her rising powers: the public did not discover in her the future tragic muse, and for herself—"She felt that she was greater than she knew." She returned to her provincial career; she spent seven years in patient study, in reflection, in contemplation, and in mastering the practical part of her profession; and then she returned at the age of twenty-eight, and burst upon the world in the prime of her beauty and transcendent powers, with all the attributes of confirmed and acknowledged excellence.

It appears that, in her first season, she did not play one of Shakspeare's characters: she performed Isabella, Euphrasia, Jane Shore, Calista, and Zara. In a visit she paid to Dr. Johnson, at the conclusion of the season, she informed him that it was her intention, the following year, to bring out some of Shakspeare's heroines, particularly Katherine of Arragon, to which she then gave the preference as a character. Dr. Johnson agreed with her, and added that, when she played Katherine, he would hobble to the theatre himself to see her; but he did not live to pay her this tribute of admiration. He, however, paid her another not less valuable: describing his visitor after her departure, he said, "she left nothing behind her to be censured or despised; neither praise nor money, those two powerful corrupters of mankind, seem to have depraved her." 6 In this interview she seems to have pleased the old critic and moralist, who was also a severe and acute judge of human nature, and not inclined to judge favourably of actresses, by the union of modesty with native dignity which at all times distinguished her;—a rare union! and most delightful in those who are the objects of the public gaze, and when the popular enthusiasm is still in all its first intoxicating effervescence.

The first of Shakspeare's characters which Mrs. Siddons performed was Isabella, in Measure for Measure, (1784,) and the next Constance. In the same year Sir Joshua painted her as the tragic Muse. 7 With what a deep interest shall we now visit this her true apotheosis,—now that it has received its last consecration! The rest of Shakspeare's characters followed in this order: Lady Macbeth in 1785, and, soon afterwards, as if by way of contrast, Desdemona, Ophelia, Rosalind. In 1786 she played Imogen; in 1788 Katherine of Arragon; and, in 1789, Volumnia; and in the same season she played Juliet, being then in her thirty-fifth year,—too old for Juliet; nor did this ever become one of her popular parts; she left it to her niece to identify