have I enjoyed the supreme felicity of weeping over her performance of the enamoured and luckless Juliet, in the Duchess of St Albans' private box. My beloved Glorvina was so infinitely affected the first time she witnessed this great triumph of histrionic art, that she implored me to permit her to stay at home on the other two evenings, and her cousin, Henry St Aubyn, kindly requested also to remain in our mansion, to cheer the sweet girl's solitude. On the third evening, my darling Virginia-you know her sensibility-actually fainted in Colonel Quintin's arms, who happened most fortuitously to be seated behind her, so that as she sank gracefully back from the high stool on which she was sitting I think by the by this sort of sédia is but an uneasy place of repose-she could not avoid reclining on the Colonel's shoulder. I would that you could have seen how sweetly the poor thing blushed when she half unclosed her dark eyes upon the Colonel's moustachios! She has, however, promised not to be so naughty again. But what do I hear? A bell loudly rung,-it comes from my Glorvina's chamber! Scarcely an hour since, she expressed a wish for some mulligatawney soup, and I know she could not eat it, were I not to cheer her with the maternal presence of,

Your very

"My dear sir, affectionate friend and cousin, "DORINDA."

"Alias," said I, "Dorothy, Dolly, or Doll, in the good days of our childhood! Oh, my poor Coz, thou art, indeed, sophisticated! I warrant me now, that thou thinkest thyself a second Madame de Sevigne! How much pains, I wonder, did the conclusion of thy letter cost thee? No doubt, thou wert vastly elevated at bringing in thy name so cleverly at the end. Ha, ha, I know a little But now for the huckaback of Dame Dykes. Coarse as it will be, I shall prefer it to thy flimsy tissue!"

"MY DEAR FRIEND,

"THIS comes to enquire, whether you have done that little law-business for me, about which we talked when

VOL. XXVII. NO. CLXI.

you were last in town. I also want to know, whether you can recommend to me a good honest butler, for we have turned away our last; because the man was so silly as to write poetry, forsooth; and, would you believe it, he used to clap his hand to his forehead, when he was waiting at dinner, and run out of the room. Then, when he came back, he used to say, Only a thought, ma'am, which I feared might escape me.' But the worst of it was, that the silly gander chose to write verses to my niece Lucy; and, as I was settling the chairs in the best drawing-room, I spied Lucy's sack upon the sofa. Now, you must know that is a thing which I never allow; and, as I want to cure Madam Lucy of her trapesy ways, I turned all the things out of the bag, meaning to lock them up in my own drawer, and frighten the girl by thinking she had lost them. But what should I see amongst the things, but a copy of verses by Tripp, my butler-a rebus, I believe, they call it on Madam Lucy's name. I'll copy it for you.

'Lovely thou art, as planets in the skyUnless thou pity me, I soon must die. Come, beauteous nymph, and bless these longing arms;

[Shocking wasn't it?]

Your face and form unite a thousand charms.'

"I must say, that, when I shewed it to Lucy, she was as angry as I was; for she, poor soul, knew nothing about the verses being in the bag. It seems the impudent fellow had popt them in a little while before I found it. Of course, after this, I soon made Master Tripp trip off. I haven't yet filled my three pages, which I think it is genteel to do-for I like to give my friends as much as I can for their money-and postage runs very high. I scarcely know what to write about-Oh, I and the girls have been to Covent-Garden theatre, to see the young lady they talk so much about. I couldn't prevail on Mr D- to go, for he hasn't been to a theatre, since he fell asleep the first night that Madame Catalani sung in England, and was woke up by her dying scream over her husband's tomb. I may say, that I know

D

something of these things, for I always loved going to a play-and I remember Mrs Siddons-and my opinion is, that Miss Fanny isn't a bit like her, though the newspapers say she is. I thought her more like Miss Betty Cuckoo, whom you and I remember, [Heavens, I exclaimed, then she must be lovely!] and I thought that she died very well, indeed. I do wonder how persons can fall back so, quite like a stone, on the hard boards, without breaking all their bones. Perhaps the boards on the stage are only mattrasses painted to look like boards. Nancy and Susy were very much pleased, and were obliged to ask me very often for my pocket-handkerchief, having-like careless chits as they always are-forgotten to bring their own. My niece Lucy, who is very clever, and reads Italian, says, that Miss Kemble has a very good notion of acting; but not so good as Miss Aithea Cod at Elysium-house academy, where she was brought up. She doesn't like her voice at all. In a day or two, you will receive a collar of brawn and a Stilton cheese, which our son Samuel brought, on purpose for you, from Trinity College, at Cambridge. He says, they do such things very well there. I am now come to the end of my paper. So with love from all, I remain,

"Your old friend to command, "MARY DYKES.

"P. S.-I was so squeezed, and so hot at the play, that if I hadn't thought of bringing some apples and oranges with me from our dessert, I think I should have been obliged to come away before the dying scene, which would have been a pity, as that is always so much the best part of a play.

"P. S.-Encore. I forgot to tell you, that I think Miss Kemble screams very well. She made me jump three times, and creeble all over."

I laid down the letter to enjoy a quiet laugh, and then opened Frank Prosser's dispatch. "Dear CrustyUm-um-3 per cent-Norfolk tenants very backward with their rents -wet season-Russia has out-manœuvred us with a vengeance-[right, right!]-Our old acquaint

ance Prodgers is dead-left a wife and thirteen children-badly off[poor fellow, poor things-must see what I can do for them]-Court Journal a great humbug-[knew that before]-Fanny Kemble-[oh, here it comes at last.] You desire my opinion of Fanny Kemble. My expectations of her were too much raised in the first instance, and therefore I am hardly a fair judge. The drama has, for the last few years, been so far beyond the possibility of getting worse, that I have long hoped it might grow better. Tragic acting, especially, has been so completely buried in its grave, that I have con fidently expected a Phoenix to rise from its ashes. There have been many false alarms, many counterfeit births-from all I had heard, I thought we had got the true thing at last. And I do not say that we have not. Miss Kemble is a girl of sense and feeling, possessing an hereditary and instinctive talent for acting. But she has much to learn. It is, indeed, ridiculous to suppose that she should leap out at once, a ready-armed Minerva of the theatre, from her papa's drawing-room-yet, such is the insensible effect, which the opinion of the multitude has upon even such strong heads as ours, my dear Crusty,

[what an excellent observation!] -that I entered Covent-Garden, expecting I knew not what-something beyond nature. Of course I was disappointed, and deserved to be so. If Raphael's pictures disappointed Sir Joshua Reynolds, I must not quarrel with the fair Fanny for disappointing me. The fact is, that the human imagination is such a wonderful power, that its poorest operations transcend the finest realities. [There's a sensible man for you!] Miss Kemble is very young, and it would be hard to expect from her such excellence as practice and experience alone can bestow. Even Garrick, when he first appeared on the London boards, was by no means perfect in his art; as the contemporary critics prove by their not very courteous, letters of advice to him. Yet we are so apt to deify things past, that I doubt not it would offend many excellent persons to tell them, that Garrick ever improved, from the first hour that he trode the stage. Perhaps I should even shock

the enthusiastic by saying of their present idol, that she will improve -but to you, my dear friend, who are not easily carried away by the popular breath, [That's very true!] may assert, that Miss Kemble will, nay, must improve, not only mentally, but physically. At present, her At present, her figure is by no means wholly developed, neither has her voice reach ed its full powers. When she strains the latter beyond its pitch, it becomes unpleasing; and, in a scream, positively disagreeable. [Many men, many minds, Mrs Dykes liked her scream.] Her countenance is intellectual, but not handsome. [I thought so.] To call it plain, would shock the gallantry of so devoted an admirer of the fair sex, as I am. [What would Mrs Prosser say to that, I wonder?] The most promising circumstance of all is, that she evidently throws out her best coups de theatre from native genius, and not from teaching. The proof of this is, that when not highly excited and hurried away, as it were, by the passion of the moment, she rarely succeeds. When

she is

Not touch'd but rapt, not waken'd but inspired,'

then it is that her acting may be called great, and even wonderful. In short, the girl will do very well; and can only be injured by such injudicious praise as the papers lavish upon her, when they assert, that her debût is the finest since the days of Mrs Siddons; or, in still a higher strain, that her Belvidera will be 'the sublimest effort of female genius ever beheld!!"" "Admirable Frank Prosser," said I, as I consigned his letter to my green morocco pocket-book, and the two others to the fire, by which I had been toasting my toes in the Club-room-ramming them well down with the poker, at the same time that I mended the fire with my own peculiar dexterity, acquired by forty years' practice. "Admirable; Frank, you and I always agree. You know what's what as well as any one. Well, now that the subject is fresh in my head, I'll go home and write down all I can remember about Miss O'Neill. Perhaps my friend North will put it in the cleverest Magazine going, just to give the public memory a jog, and remind

nine-tenths of the world that such things were. He will forgive an old man's garrulity; for, if I remember rightly, he has an income in his leg himself, and almost as comely a frosty pow as I have." But before I dash in medias res, I must make two needful observations. [Thus I begin, while seated in my own warm study, with my feet on a turkey rug.] The first is, that I have not the slightest intention of detracting from Miss Kemble's fame. I do not mean to follow the poet's recipe for complimenting ladies

'Who praises Lesbia's form and feature, Must call her sister ugly creature.'

Indeed I must needs be acquitted of any intent to institute odious comparisons, by the simple fact, that I have never seen the charming Fanny, who is, I doubt not, from my judicious Frank's account of her, a girl of great and unusual endowments. That she is generous and amiable, her coming forward in the way she has done, sufficiently testifies. May all success attend her virtuous efforts! My second remark is,-that surprised, that I, who must rememI daresay persons will be not a little ber Fanny's aunt in her best days, and even the mild decline of that more distant luminary, Mrs Yates, should depart so much from the usual habits of old men-the laudatores temporis acti, you know-as to rave, with all the fervour of youth, about an actress of yesterday. My dear readers, (if I have any,) be it known to you, that I always determined, even from my youth up, to avoid the common errors and follies of old men; and I thank Heaven, that I have been enabled to fulfil my resolution. By thus retarding the senility of my mind, I have managed (I must say) to escape the usual jests and jibes against old bachelors, and to establish myself an universal favourite amongst the young and the lively. Were I disposed to tell tales, I could mention various proofs of my present popularity with pretty girls; but, sweet creatures, depend upon my honour-I will never betray you!Now, let me return to "that which is immediate."

The first character in which I saw Miss O'Neill, was Isabella, in the Fatal Marriage. She had already be

come popular, and drew crowds to the house; a circumstance so far against her, in my estimation, that I took my place in the front row of the pit, with a dogged resolution not to be imposed upon, and by no means to be hurried out of my critical composure by a start or a scream. But from the moment that the enchant ress entered in her sable robe, which so admirably set off the snowy whiteness of her skin-from the instant that she had made her first most graceful courtesy, I was a gone man. I felt that she was the true thing. Even as the first note of a great singer rivets the attention-even as a single touch from a master's hand demands and satisfies the eye-so did Miss O'Neill's first look and word take possession of my heart and soul, and proclaim all her greatness. I never felt this with Mrs Siddons. Her style addressed the intellect more exclusively. She was a great actress-but she was an actress. Miss O'Neill was a woman-a confiding, tender, passionate, love-inspiring woman; yet not without dignity and grandeur too, and a proudly humble sense of what was due to her feminine majesty. It is not my intention to go through her performance of that disagreeable play, the Fatal Marriage, which her performance alone could have rendered bearable,-or indeed to give any of her characters a regular and critical consideration. I rather wish to impart to my reader some general notion of her merits, if he has been so unfortunate as never to have seen her, or if he has, to recall them to his remembrance. Miss O'Neill, in face and figure, might be characterised by the epithet lovely. There was a harmony in her features, and in the proportions of her form, which was music to the mind. Had she been taller, she might have been a tragedy Queen-but she would not have been Miss O'Neill. Had she possessed a dark eye and beetling brow, she might have frowned and scowled to the delight of the distant galleries; but what would have become of her smile-of all the just gradations of feeling which dawned and melted away upon her fair cheek?

I have always thought it a favourable circumstance that her countenance, when at rest, was not fixed and frozen into any marked expres

sion. This allowed of its taking the impress of all. Some faces seem petrified into fierceness by a glance at the Gorgon; others appear always striving to repress a simper. Any malformation of the mouth, more especially, will give an unfortunate eternity to some one, and that, generally, not very agreeable expression. But Miss O'Neill's face was wholly devoid of any professional or pertinacious look. Her countenance was the sleep of feeling. When awakened, it was but the instrument of the internal agency: Passion moulded her delicate features to its own purposes, and Genius hallowed it as the interpreter of his meaning. The mouth-that wonderful organ of intelligence, that distinguishing characteristic of humanity-which requires not the aid of words to confer upon it the gift of speech-that marvellous feature, whose mutable vitality baffles the painter's skill even more than the eye, common to all animated beings

the mouth of Miss O'Neill was exceedingly beautiful. The lower lip just protruded enough to rescue it from that symptom of fatuity-its retreat-" Some bee had stung it newly." Her brow, as I said before, was not marked enough for the beau-ideal of a tragic empress-and I am glad it was not. The manner in which her head was set upon her bust might have challenged the art of Phidias. Nothing could possibly be more devoid of fault than the line from the back of her head to her shoulder, when her face was turned in profile. Her hand was beautiful, and her foot worthy of such a hand. From this exquisite conformation, and from the mind which dwelt within so fair a shrine, resulted a presiding grace, which modelled every gesture, and swayed every movement. Never, in the course of my long life, have I seen a being so graceful as Miss O'Neill-and I never expect to see one. Our actresses are, in general, sadly deficient in this particular. I remember, after being on the Continent for some time, that, when I returned, the women on our stage seemed to toss their arms like so many windmills in full sail. Miss O'Neill never displayed such starts and flings. I do not think that it was possible she could. Even had she been obliged to perform a saraband

over the kitchen poker, she would have done it gracefully-she was grace even to the very tips of her fingers. I used to remark that she never grasped the arm of a lover or husband, as some ladies, whom I have seen give a gripe like a blacksmith's vice, but tenderly and delicately. She laid her white fingers upon the arm of him whom she addressed in love or in supplication. Talk of Lady Hamilton's attitudes !— I maintain that a woman, who was no better than she should be, could not be innately and truly graceful. Miss O'Neill's attitudes might have afforded a gallery of statues for the court of Virtue-or for the court of George IV. In Isabella, for instance, when the tiresome man (whose name I forget) who worried her into matrimony, first proposes to take charge of her child-never shall I forget the expressive gesture with which she turned round to the boy, clasped him with one arm, and, with the other, gave an apparently involuntary movement of repulsion. In Mrs Haller, again, when she sunk upon the floor, and, clasping her knees, let her head fall upon them, so that her "wild-reverted tresses" hung as a veil before her, no ancient statue could have afforded a finer model for the chisel.

I scarcely know how it happened, but certain it is that Miss O'Neill never excited that burst of popular feeling which Fanny Kemble seems to be now exciting. It is so easy to see, when persons praise any thing or any body, from being really pleased! In such a case the sentences trip off the tongue without reservation. Now, Miss O'Neill was generally praised with an if or a but. Some wiseacres went so far as to discover, that if she had been Mrs Siddons, she would have been a very fine actress. One cause of this comparative indifference to Miss O'Neill's superlative merits, I think, may be found in the peculiar aspect which folly has assumed in our enlightened era. There is a great deal of cant abroad about " deep passion," and the "human heart," and " thoughts that lie too deep for tears." Now, as the language of all species of cant is very easily learned, it follows that the great proportion of fools who can do nothing else, adopt that which happens to be most in vogue. Accord

ingly, our ears are stunned with vain babblings about “ green fields," and "dark thoughts," and I know not what. To hear the present generation talk, one would imagine that all the arcana of human nature had been just discovered, and made as easy as A, B, C. How Sophocles contrived to affect the feelings, or Shakspeare to get such an odd insight into things, must appear a mystery to the men of this generation, seeing that their theories had not yet issued from the womb of time. Every one nowa-days, who can write a novel or a poem, that shall set the young misses a weeping, is pronounced to be brimfull of passion and profound reflection. Truly this profundity is that of a slop-basin, the bottom of which you cannot see, only because it is so full of dregs. Ah! Mr North, the good old days of Pope and Dryden are passed away! Depend upon it, could Paradise Lost now issue from Murray's press, it would be pronounced- Such a work as it is by no means lese-majesté in the court of criticism to pass over. A poem of some merit, certainly-but by no means distinguished by that depth of feeling and intuitive insight into the human heart which distinguish the productions of the present day." Do I exaggerate? The Literary Gazette, which affirms that a drama by L. E. L. can only be compared to Shakspeare's Romeo and Juliet, could not consistently write of such a work as Paradise Lost in warmer terms than those I have imagined above. Of such critics one may say

"Their praise is censure, and their cen

sure praise."

To these blind leaders of the blind, I attribute the half-and-half praise which was too often bestowed upon Miss O'Neill-by their influence I explain the phenomenon of her being so soon compounded with forgotten things." Persons of this stamp (stupid fellows!) discovered that Miss O'Neill wanted genius-forsooth! In the character of Juliet, I remember that, after the masquerade scene, when she had been eagerly enquiring who Romeo is, just as she was preparing to quit the banquetroom, she turned round and stood as