brilliant, intellectual, and "tonish" in the London of that day. They had all come with powdered heads, gold-laced coats, and diamond-encircled throats to see a pretty woman act an affecting play; but they were hardly prepared for the passion and pathos that for the time being shook them out of their artificial lace handkerchief grief and bowed the powdered heads with genuine emotion. She was well supported—Smith, Palmer, Farren, Packer, and Mrs. Love acting with her, to say nothing of the veteran Roger Kemble, her father, who was, she tells us, little less agitated than herself. Her husband did not even venture to appear behind or before the scenes, his agitation was so great.
"At length I was called to my fiery trial. The awful consciousness that one is the sole object of attention to that immense space, lined, as it were, with human intellect from top to bottom and all around, may, perhaps, be imagined, but can never be described, and can never be forgotten."
If that night were never to pass from the memory of Mrs. Siddons, neither would it ever pass from the memory of those who were present, or never be erased from the annals of the English stage, of which that beautiful and pathetic face and form was to be for many years the chief pride.
The story of Isabella, or the Fatal Marriage, is simple in construction, the interest centring in one figure, that of the heroine. Biron, son of a proud and worldly-minded man, marries a girl beneath him in station, contrary to his father's wish. A son is born, but Biron has hardly had time to rejoice over his birth before he is called away to the war, and, after some months, is reported as killed in battle. The wife
