with an indulgent smile, which even she, encased in all her panoply of prudish decorum, could not suppress.
At last even her patience was worn out, and at the close of her brother's first year of management she retired from the theatre. Sheridan dared to boast they could do without her. A scheme was then hatching in the ever-fertile Irish brain of the proprietor that was destined to revolutionise the dramatic world of London. He discovered that the taste of the day, and the requirements of his own pocket, demanded a larger and more luxurious building than Old Drury; the walls that had re-echoed to the grand tones of Betterton, the musical love-making of Barry, and the passionate declamation of Garrick, was to be pulled down to satisfy the greed and the ambition of Sheridan. Immediate proposals for debentures amounting to £160,000 were issued, and, wonderful to relate, taken up in a very short time. But, alas! to cover the interest of this enormous sum, it was determined to build a house nearly double the size. Neither Mrs. Siddons nor her brother seems to have considered the disastrous consequence this would exercise on their art. The perfect acoustics and compact stage of the old house were to be swept away to give place to an immense dome-shaped space, and an expanse requiring undignified energy of motion to traverse. The immediate consequence was evident; recourse had to be taken to stage artifice to manage the entrance and the exit, while gesture had to be more violent, expression more exaggerated, and voice unduly raised to produce an effect.
In Garrick's Drury, also, the front row of boxes was open like a gallery, and everyone who occupied them
