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 censure 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

if lost in unutterable thought, with her eyes fixed upon the spot where Romeo had lately passed away from her sight; as if her fancy reproduced his form in that very place; as if the ground, last hallowed by his footsteps, was dear to her as her heart's-blood. Her "rapt soul was sitting in her eyes"-her whole body spoke-then, with a deep, impatient sigh, she turned away, and cleared her brow for an encounter with this every-day world. Was not this genius? Was it not genius of the first order? And her acting was full of such touches-not, as I can answer for, repeated night after night, but varied, and springing from the impulse of the moment. Such a power as this-of embodying the poet's meaning-of actually creating new ideas, as if the poet's mantle had descended on the player-does itself deserve the name of poetry. What a pity that its creations should be so evanescent-dying with the tone or gesture that produced them! How much more nobly would critics be employed in noting down and giving perpetuity to such fugitive graces, than in discovering wants and imperfections-how much better would they deserve of the world, if they handed down to posterity the true merits, instead of the faults, of an actor! Wiseacres were for ever complaining that Miss O'Neill could not act Queen Catherine and Lady Macbeth like Mrs Siddons. They never took the trouble to reflect that Mrs Siddons could not act Belvidera, Juliet, Mrs Haller, like Miss O'Neill. The powers of each were so essentially different, that the world ought to have been thankful to have had two such. But, say the critics, the style of Mrs Siddons was a greater style than that of Miss O'Neill. I deny it. Miss O'Neill not only had a wider range than her predecessor, but often invaded her province. She could rise to grandeur-but Mrs Siddons could never melt to tenderness. I wish that all persons, who imagine that a fair brow and a blue eye could never awe the soul as majestically as those of a darker complexion, had seen Miss O'Neill's look of offended dignity, when Jaffier, in Venice Preserved, seems to doubt her power to keep the secret of his plots. I forget the exact words

that Belvidera is speaking at the time, but she compares her lot with that of the wife of Brutus-" For Brutus trusted her." As she uttered the last sentence, her whole form seemed lifted from the earth by the spirit within. She could have made the world her footstool. Again, Mrs Siddons has been excelled, within my memory, in some of her finest characters. The young and pert will laugh, perhaps, at an old man for asserting that Mrs Yates was more completely the Lady Macbeth which Shakspeare drew-yet such is my opinion. To mention a single instance of superiority-in the sleepwalking scene, Mrs Siddons carefully deposited her candle on a table, and then proceeded to rub her hands for the imagined purpose of effacing the "damned spot." Now Mrs Yates was the actual sleep-walker, hurried from her bed by a guilty conscience; -the quick and sometimes vacillating step-the candle not laid aside, but carelessly held with flaring flame, while she wrung her hands togetherthe open and unwinking eye-all indicated the sleep of the body and the wakefulness of the soul. On the other hand, it may be safely asserted that Miss O'Neill has never been excelled in her own peculiar characters. Where a part precisely seems to fit the powers, the appearance, the very look and gesture of a performer, the ideal personage and the real become thenceforward identified, as it were, in the imagination. This is the case with Kean in Shylock-this was the case with Miss O'Neill in Juliet. When she first made her appearance, with her hair so simply knotted up, she looked scarce fifteen-sorrow seemed never to have come near her. She waited upon her mother's eye with the dutiful innocence of a child. Her laugh came from the heart-her step was buoyant. After she had beheld the arbiter of her destiny, and pronounced the fatal words"My grave is like to be my marriage bed"

The

-you saw the infusion of a new principle into her character. She thenceforth displayed the thoughtfulness of a devoted being. bliss of loving and of being loved, was ever present with her-but she knew that she was playing a deep and desperate game. She had seen death from afar, and the shadow of

sion of love, till he saw Juliet? Has not every imaginative, and passionate nature, whether male or female, been compelled by "the strong necessity of loving," to deck some idol in the niches of its own creation, before the true deity of its worship has appeared? I know something of these things, Mr North, though I am an old bachelor, and I pronounce that no one ever fell truly in love at threeand-twenty, who had not had many loves since he was fifteen. I dare say that neither you nor I have remained in the blessed state from not knowing what love is. You, I hear, are about to prove to the world, that you have no insuperable objections to matrimony. I vow I will dance at your wedding, and choose the youngest and prettiest girl in the room. Who knows but that my turn may come next?-No, no! Shakspeare never soared more nobly above the dull marshes of common-place, than when he broke up the ground of Romeo's heart to receive the celestial plant of love by the plough-share of Miss Rosalind's eye, and fertilized it by love-sick tears from his own.

I have been more particular in my notice of Miss O'Neill's performance of Juliet, both because I think it was her finest character, and because it is that which, as acted by Miss Kemble, is now exciting the fever of the town. I now return to the question, "Is the style of Mrs Siddons a finer style than that of Miss O'Neill ?" Mrs Siddons was unrivalled in the representation of the more terrible passions such as ambition, hatred, revenge, &c. Now, are these passions more noble in their essence than love, pity, sorrow, and the other milder feelings? I think not. The first are all selfish in their origin and end; their conflicts are great, but their results are mean. The last are not only noble but ennobling. As a great poet of our own day observes:"A potent wand does sorrow wield;

Now Miss O'Neill may be said to move along the way of real life with a soul of power,-nay more, she threw an imaginative influence over the way of common life. If I may be allowed the use of that much abused figure-antithesis, she idealized the real, and realized the ideal. Her love was heroic, her pity was as the dew from heaven,-her sorrow, though the sorrow of a mortal,

"Was bright

With something of an angel light." Ambition, revenge, &c. deal in lofty phrases, and marked expressions of countenance; but there is nothing of this sort to bolster out the milder (so called) passions. A heart and soul and plastic features are all that these last have to depend upon. As therefore the difficulties, in this kind, are greater, so ought success to be attended with a greater triumph. Mrs Siddons, I should say, possessed dramatic talent in the highest degree,— the palm of genius I should award to Miss O'Neill. In real feeling of the character which she represented, I

must think that Miss O'Neill far transcended Mrs Siddons. Stationed be

hind the scenes, I have watched the latter as she left the stage, after a wondrous burst of dramatic power,― I have seen her arms fall composedly by her side, her face pass in one instant from the extreme of expression to her common look. The wings of the stage once passed, she was no longer Belvidera, or Mrs Beverly-but Mrs Siddons. I have observed Miss O'Neill, in similar circumstances, retaining the impress of the passion which had really entered into her

heart. There can be no doubt but that she wept real tears. I have her own authority for it. Professor L-, my very dear friend, and old school-fellow, who resides at Cambridge, told me that when Miss O'Neill visited that

university, and acted at the Barnwell

theatre, he asked her whether it was true that she really shed tears during the performance of affecting parts. She acknowledged that she did. "But you must not think, (she continued,) that such tears are painful. They are rendered pleasing by the consciousness of fiction. They are such as one would shed in reading a pathetic story. Moreover, the strong state of excitement naturally brought on by per

forming-the applause-the tears of those around me,-all conspire to elevate me, and to draw such tears from my eyes as all great emotions are calculated to produce. Were they such tears as guilt or agony really shed, I must have been dead long ago." Now I ask you, Mr North, did not this explanation shew at once genius and good sense,-genius to feel, good sense to disclaim more feeling than was natural, or indeed possible? Rousseau wept thus over the sorrows of his own Heloise. We more often hear of, than see heroines, whose beauty is improved by crying, and instead of saying with Tommy Moore,

"You look so lovely in your tears,

That I must bid you shed them still," I should be disposed to address my mistress, were she much given to the melting mood, in the following distich

“You look so frightful in your tears, That I must beg you'll take a pill ;" videlicet, to get rid of the blue devils. But Miss O'Neill really did look lovely in her tears. In the character of Mrs Haller, she reminded me (I hope it is not spoken irreverently) of that beautiful exclamation in Holy Writ-"Oh! that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night!" To use an old simile, she looked like a lily bent beneath a thunder-shower. Tears were her rest, her food, her luxury-she was steeped in tears. Yet she did not, after the old tragedy custom, brandish her pocket-handkerchief in the face of the audience. She did not get it ready as if she were pumping up her tears by some nice hydraulic calculation-but, with a trembling, and sometimes, a hurried hand, she felt for it, and drew it forth, and seemed to strive rather to hide than to display her gushing grief. The scene, in which she restores the jewels to her husband, was almost too heart-rending to be contemplated. It pressed upon the senses with the conviction of reality. Her Mrs Haller, in particular, and, indeed, all her characters, in general, possessed the rare merit of an unbroken unity of design. As, in a perfect picture, every accessory is harmonized by the master's hand so as to produce

one great result-as every part tends towards the effect of the whole-so, in Miss O'Neill's acting, every ray of genius was but a component part of one refulgent orb. She did not strain after insulated graces, or surprising exhibitions of momentary power— neither was any portion of her part hurried over, or even carelessly touched, as if it were insignificant. She did not appear to be husbanding her strength for one ranting speech, or a few starts and screams. From the beginning to the end she was the being she represented. Not sometimes only, but continually, she was agitated by the same fears, awakened by the same hopes, impelled by the same motives of action-as might be supposed to influence the character which she delineated. This continuity of feeling was marvellously evident in the expression of her countenance. I remember being particularly struck with this, in her representation of Mrs Oakley in the Jealous Wife. While conversing on indifferent subjects-while apparently rambling from the main plot of the piece-there was always an air of anxiety-a wandering of the eye-a slight abstraction-which indicated that there was an under-current of more important thought. In society, as well as in solitude, she was still the uneasy, jealous wife. Miss O'Neill's performance of this very character sufficiently refuted the invidious assertion that she did not succeed in comedy. When I speak of comedy, I must be understood to mean the drama of real and everyday life, in distinction to the drama of ideal and heroic life. As there has been much misapprehension on this point, I will explain myself more particularly. The word comedy, according to its Greek derivation, merely signifies something sung, or chanted. Dante used it in this sense, when he gave a name to his immortal poem. When dramatic performances were no longer accompanied by the chorus, the sense of the word became more restricted; and, perhaps from some association of a lighter kind, with the idea of a musical accompaniment, it at length was used in distinction to the loftier and severer style of the dramatic muse. But, as men love the widest possible extremes of distinction between one