topics. Certain I am, however, from what I then observed, that Mrs. Siddons, in common with many women of rank who were on the list of the Barley Wood visiters, did not apprehend, in their full sense and severity, the peculiar principles of Hannah More. This lady, excellent as she was, and incapable of practising any studied deceit, had, however, an instinct of worldly wisdom, which taught her to refrain from shocking ears polite with too harsh or too broad an exposure of all which she believed. This, at least, if it were any duty of hers, she considered, perhaps, as already fulfilled by her writings; and, moreover, the very tone of good breeding, which she had derived from the good company she had kept, made her feel the impropriety of lecturing her visiters even when she must have thought them in error. Mrs. Siddons obviously thought Hannah More a person who differed from the world chiefly by applying a greater energy, and sincerity, and zeal, to a system of religious truth equally known to all. Repentance, for instance all people hold that to be a duty; and Mrs. Hannah More differed from them only by holding it to be a duty of all hours, a duty for youth not less than for age. But how much would she have been shocked to hear that Mrs. Hannah More held all repentance, however indispensable, yet in itself, and though followed by the sincerest efforts at reformation of life, to be utterly unavailing as any operative part of the means by which man gains acceptance with God. To rely upon repentance, or upon anything that man can do for himself, that Mrs. Hannah More considered as the mortal taint, as the nowтov Feudos in the worldly theories of the Christian scheme; and I have heard the two ladies Mrs. More and Mrs. Siddons, I mean talking by the hour together, as completely at cross purposes as it is possible to imagine. Everything, in - fact, of what was special in the creed adopted by Mrs. Hannah More, by Wilberforce, and many others known as evangelical Christians, is always capable, in lax conversation, of being translated into a vague general sense, which completely obscures the true limitations of the meaning. Mrs. Hannah More, however, was too polished a woman to allow of any sectarian movement being impressed upon the conversation; consequently, she soon directed it to literature, upon which Mrs. Siddons was very amusing, from her recollections of Dr. Johnson, whose fine-turned compliment to herself, (so much in the spirit of those unique compliments addressed to eminent people by Louis XIV.) had for ever planted the doctor's memory in her heart. She spoke also of Garrick and of Mrs. Garrick; but not, I think, with so much respect and affection as Mrs. Hannah More, who had, in her youthful days, received the most friendly attentions from both, though coming forward at that time in no higher character than as the author of Percy, the most insipid of tragedies. Mrs. Siddons was prevailed on to read pas sages from both Shakspeare and Milton. The dramatic readings were delightful; in fact, they were almost stage rehearsals, accompanied with appropriate gesticulation. One was the great somnambulist scene in Macbeth, which was the ne plus ultra in the whole range of Mrs. Siddon's scenical exhibitions, and can never be forgotten by any man who once had the happiness to witness that immortal performance of the divine artist. Another, given at the request of a Dutch lady, residing in the neighborhood of Barley Wood, was the scene from King John, of the Lady Constance, beginning-Gone to be married! gone to swear a peace!' &c. The last, and truly superb for the musical intonation of the cadences, was that inimitable apology or pleading of Christian charity for Cardinal Wolsey, addressed to his bitterest enemy, Queen Catherine. All these, in different degrees and different ways, were exquisite. But the readings from Milton were not to my taste. And, some weeks after, when, at Mrs. Hannah More's request, I had read to her some of Lord Byron's most popular works, I got her to acknowledge, in then speaking upon the subject of reading, that perhaps the style of Mrs. Siddons' reading had been too much determined to the dramatic cast of emphasis, and the pointed expression of character and situation which must always belong to a speaker bearing a part in a dialogue, to admit of her assuming the tone of a rapt poetic inspi ration. Meantime, whatever she did whether it were in display of her own matchless talents, but always at the earnest request of the company or of her hostess — or whether it were in gentle acquiescent attention to the display made by others or whether it were as one member of a general party, taking her part occasionally, for the amusement of the rest, and contributing to the general fund of social pleasure nothing could exceed the amiable, kind, and unassuming deportment of Mrs. Siddons. She had retired from the stage, and no longer regarded herself as a public character. But so much the stronger did she seem to think the claims of her friends upon anything she could do for their amusement. Meantime, amongst the many pleasurable impressions * I saw her, however, myself upon the stage twice after this meeting at Barley Wood: it was at Edinburgh; and the parts were those of Lady Macbeth and Lady Randolph. But she then performed only as an expression of kindness to her grandchildren. Professor Wilson and myself saw her on the occasion from the stage-box, with a delight embittered by the certainty that we saw her for the last time. which Mrs. Siddons' presence never failed to make, there was one which was positively painful and humiliating: it was the degradation which it inflicted upon other women. One day there was a large dinner party at Barley Wood Mrs. Siddons was present; and I remarked to a gentleman who sat next to me a remark which he heartily confirmed that upon rising to let the ladies leave us, Mrs. Siddons, by the mere necessity of her regal deport ment, figure, manner, air, without meaning it, absolutely dwarfed the whole party, and made them look ridiculous ; though Mrs. H. More, and others of the ladies present, were otherwise really women of very pleasing appearance. One final remark is forced upon me by my recollec. tions of Mrs. Jordan, and of her most unhappy end; it is this; and strange enough it seems: That the child of laughter and comic mirth, whose laugh itself thrilled the heart with pleasure, and who created gaiety of the noblest order for one entire generation of her country. men, died prematurely, and in exile, and in affliction, which really killed her by its own stings. If ever woman died of a broken heart, of tenderness bereaved, and of hope deferred, that woman was Mrs. Jordan. On the other hand, this sad votary of Melpomene, the queen of the tragic stage, died, full of years and honors, in the bosom of her admiring country, in the centre of idolizing friends, and happy in all things except this, that some of those whom she most loved on earth had gone before her. Strange contrariety of lots for the two transcendent daughters of the comic and tragic muse. For my own part, I shall always regard my recollections of Mrs. Siddons as those in which chiefly I have an advantage over the coming generation; nay, perhaps, over all generations; for many centuries may revolve without producing such another transcendent creature. IN London, for a space of fifteen or twenty years, the most interesting by far of all my friends, and, singly, a sufficient magnet to draw me in that direction, sometimes when I had no other motive for such a journey, was the celebrated Peripatetic, John Stewart, commonly called Walking Stewart.' This man was indeed, in many respects, a more interesting person than any I have known, amongst those distinguished by accomplishments of the same kind. He was by birth a Scotsman: but it was little indeed that he owed to the land of his nativity; for he had been early turned adrift, and thrown altogether upon his own resources. At school, as he often told me with high glee, and even with something of gratified vanity in the avowal, no boy except himself was considered an invincible dunce, or what is sometimes called a Bergen-op-zoom; that is, a head impregnable to all teaching and all impressions that could be conveyed through books. Erudition, in fact, and classical or philological learning of every kind, he thoroughly despised; nor could he have been won by kindness even to take an interest in studies from which his mind naturally revolted; and thus, like many a boy before him, he obtained the reputation of a dunce, merely because his |