durance for half an hour. How will she be able to carry it for such a length of time? But young and old are expected to appear, upon that 'high solemnity' in splendid and fanciful apparel, and many of these beauties will appear in my stage finery. Lady C at first intended to present herself (as she said very drolly) as a vestal virgin, but has now decided upon the dress of a fair Circassian. I should like to see this gorgeous assembly, and I have some thoughts of walking in in the last dress of Lady Macbeth, and swear I came there in my sleep. But enough of this nonsense."
Her brother John, sharer of most of her trials and triumphs, settled at Lausanne towards the end of his life. The loss of his society was a sad deprivation, and in 1821 she paid him a visit. Her daughter Cecilia, in a letter home, described the delights of the villa the Kembles lived in, and the beauty of the surrounding scenery.
Mrs. Siddons meditated an expedition to Chamounix but for some reason it was given up, and they went to Berne; the weather was wet, however, and they were obliged to return sooner than they expected. They ate chamois, crossed a lake, mounted a glacier with two men, cutting steps in the ice with a hatchet, and did all that was required of them as travellers. "My mother bore all the fatigues much more wonderfully than any of us," the letter ends.
In spite of her wonderful energy, old age was creeping on her apace. Erysipelas, which was ultimately fatal, frequently attacked her with a burning soreness in her mouth, or with headaches that were equally painful. She had to submit to that worst penalty of advancing years, the death of friends; those
