and the audience and the actress beheld, in one of the stage boxes, a little girl holding her out an orange.
A lady, now alive, recalls to mind, when she was very young, being taken to pay a visit to "the great Mrs. Siddons." She long after remembered those wonderful eyes, and particularly the long silky eye-lashes, which she noticed were of extraordinary length, and curled upwards in a beautiful curve. On being told that the child was obliged to go away to the country, and would have no opportunity of hearing her on the stage, she kindly said she would recite for her, and did so there and then.
One of her grandchildren has described the interest of her visits to her. Frequently her grandmother would read to them, giving them the choice of the play. One evening in particular she recalled the reading of Othello. "It was a stormy night, and the thunder was heard occasionally, and she so grand and impressive; her look! her voice, her magnificent eyes, still clear and brilliant. It was real reading, not declamation, and yet the effect," she says, "was beyond anything I could conceive of the finest acting." This was only the winter before her death.
We find her now suffering all the fluctuations in spirits old age is subject to, sometimes complaining of feebleness and suffering, at others returning to all the girlish playfulness of her younger days. On July 12th, 1819, she writes to her friend Mrs. Fitzhugh:—
"Well, my dear friend, though I am not of rank and condition to be myself at the Prince's ball, my fine clothes, at any rate, will have that honour. Lady B has borrowed my Lady Macbeth's finest banquet dress, and I wish her ladyship joy in wearing it, for I found the weight of it almost too much for en-
