wholesale, I would do it very cheaply indeed, but not the less effectually. I would buy a roll of white ribbon, cut it into "nails," and put one into my own button hole, just for example's sake, and to royalize the thing. Then I would watch for merit of every kind, in all the thousand ways in which humanity does duty best-the philanthropic surgeon, the zealous missionary, the keen inventor, the genuine genius in authorship, the painstaking school-master, the good parson, the painter, the sculptor, the orator, the linguist; all the best of their kinds—ay, and women, too, whereof my queen should be first decorate--and not omitting soldier, nor sailor, nor potentate, nor peer; for all such would I watch, and bring them near me one by one, and give each of them a priceless "nail" of my white ribbon. AN EXPEDIENT. He bade them welcome to his bark: "Has none Been overlooked?" he asked. Ah! no, not one Was left to scatter gladness, like the sun. "Make sail!" they cried; "we are all here, all here! Haste, haste!" and in the distance dark and drear I saw Earth's Consolations disappear. HONESTY, One great vice in the constitution of society, is that everybody is bribed to be dishonest; and one most unexpected virtue in human nature lies in this fact, that, notwithstanding self-interest, average honesty is a pretty common quality. It must be, for instance, the direct advantage of doctors to disseminate disease, of lawyers to foment quarrels, of food merchants to encourage waste, of your tailor to recommend a cloth that soon gets rusty, of your glazier to put in panes thin enough to cause a job Macaulay, in his life of Dr. Johnson, written for the Dew Encyclopædia Britannica, mentions among his asso-again, of your boot-maker to take care that upper ciates an author by the name of Boyse, who was continually plunged in poverty, and, when his shirts were pledged, scrawled Latin verses sitting up in bed, with his arms through two holes in his blanket! As it is in the rambling rides we take, so it is in life. However closely pounded in field, or hidden in copse, there's always a practicable gap to be crept through, or an easy hindrance to be got over, or somehow or other a way out. Nothing but a cowardly stagnation ever fails utterly. If you do not win what you meant straightforwardly, you attain to something sideways. It is mighty seldom, though the path of life be hedged leathers be not tanned to imperishability; nay, in much higher matters, a total stagnation of religion in the parish promotes the home-peace of the Reverend Doctor Drone-a murrain among his kith and kin excites delicious hope in the heart of that far distant possible heir, one's cousin in the Orkneys; and a glorious victory, with colonels and majors well killed off, is to poor old subalterns prosperity and promotion. and avowed selfishness exhibited, in spite of all temptaAnd yet how seldom can we complain of any gross tions. Notwithstanding all, things run on pretty fairly, and so give human nature credit; honesty is the best policy, and we are wise enough to know it. EXPRESSION. My conceptions were grander when they were inarticulate, in my youth, than when, in after years, they found a voice. The wave, crestless in the deep sea, swelled like a mountain; it broke in shallower water, and rippled ineffectually on the shore of utterance. WEDDING CARDS. What a glossy envelope, of purest white and with a with thorns awhile, that Providence has not left a gap, silvery seal! And look at this interior pair of cards, of 66 a way to escape that ye may be able to bear it." A DREAM. In dream, methought I lay on a hill side Adown the hills a festal throng came streaming, In front were children, frolicsome and wild; They hailed the pilot-" Wilt thou let us flee the latest polished ivory patent, linked together like a couple of spaniels, or (considering the small male and large female) liker to a pair of insects pinned on cork in an entomological drawer! How burnished is that silver heraldry, how lily-white that flaky stationery, how tasty the true-knot bow of "love "-tinted satin and artificial orange-blossom-how delicate, and pure, and charming is the whole consommé of these weddingcards! Having rested a little month among the scores of other visitants in our or-molu or china-receptacle for cards, turn them out again to look at their beauty. Pity-pity! What a change is here; that silvery seal tarnished to a dirty brown, that fairy-flowered loveknot begrimed with dust and crushed into disproportion, that falsely-pure envelope, with its snowy pair of cards, all too evidently so much white-lead turning poisonously black in the searching eye of day! These things are an allegory. How much too soon is revenue for a while by a wise economy; and the last never cared to get beforehand with the world, but lived on all his means, like Mudford-Brook. WOMAN. the gloss destroyed, the beauty tarnished, the delicacy came to want; all because the first dammed up his blotted out, the whole charm of wedlock disenchanted utterly! Take care, young couple—take good care—or these blighted wedding-cards will but too truly typify your spoilt affections, and all the love and loveliness that still should be your lot. It is an old story this, that everybody knows by heart, but no one cares to utter: in nineteen cases out of twenty, wedded bliss fades with its original wreathe of orange-blossoms, and its beauty is changed and marred in equal race with that of the wedding-cards. TIME. Build as you please, time plants itself, like ivy, against your walls, and will have them over some day or other. THE DAMMED BROOK. Our two little streams-the Rippleburn and Mudford-brook-running down two valleys with a great wave of hill between them, have very different destinies and vocations; for the Rippleburn is made continually both useful and ornamental by spreading into large sheets of water, the fall-power of which turns mills, and the placid beauty whereof is in strange contrast with the clatter of machinery; while poor Mudfordbrook makes no better use of its running-away energies, than to feed a few trout and drain some marshy meadows. All for want of damming. By the same token, I remember two brothers, equal inheritors from their father, the one of whom founded a family, and the other frittered his fortune away and I'm inclined to think the real difference between a man's and a woman's heart lies in the woman's power to trust. All else may be masculine-understanding, pursuits, etc., even a freedom from the usual category of female vanities; she may have forgotten how to blush, and learnt never to fear; but so long as she can trust, she has not lost the true woman's essence. Women may fairly claim an exemption from the native suspicion and selfishness of men in this respect. There is about their loves a fearless abandon, a genuine exemplification of "making idols to find them clay." I knew a woman who had a masculine intellect, an indomitable will, and ambition sufficient to remove mountains, could ambition have stood for faith. And yet in one solitary instance, trust was even there-it lay like a gem enshrined in her heart, bright and pure; and in this very one weak part she was deceived. Alas for woman! TALKERS. Analyse some brilliant talkers, and they will be found purely reflective. A man of this description, properly to develop his powers, requires more than one listener. The greater number the better. Like prisms, the many-sided are the most effective. In a tête-à-tête they become monotonous, and resemble a looking-glass that reflects only one image. THINGS WE TALK ABOUT. them. Unfortunately, his spirit of imitation does not stop with these harmless exhibitions; he falls into French morality, into French skepticism, and French pleasures. You soon find him a regularly constituted scandal-monger. French gossip, with all its hidden point and high seasoning, he retails and dilates upon with unmistakable pleasure. His letters become crowded with the most piquant stories current in the salons of Paris. Police reports are eagerly read, the talk of the cafés industriously canvassed, the theatres pertinaciously visited, all with one object in view— the gathering up of the tidbits and crumbs of scandal. He is keen of scent, and will follow up a piece of questionable gossip with zealous tenacity. He will magnify the smallest hint into an innuendo; an innuendo into positive guilt. He never encumbers his imagination by the inconvenient limits of truth; his principle is, get scandal-genuine, if possiblebut, get scandal! THERE is a biped, vastly multiplied of late, known as "Our | He begins at once to dance and caper with the best of own Correspondent." He has become an institution with us, and a recognized necessity to every well-conducted journal in the land. His identity is sometimes difficult to discover, and in more than one quarter he is nothing but a myth-a pleasant fiction. He does not always find it necessary to abide in the place from which date his voluminous epistles; and he experiences no sort of difficulty in writing, within the same half hour, letters from all the four quarters of the globe! It is inconveniently expensive to write a letter from Venice or London, when, by the aid of a Guide Book and a lively imagination, one just as entertaining can be manufactured within stone's throw of the City Hall! "Our Own" appears in various aspects, from "lively to severe." He is gay, solemn, vivacious, disdainful, condescending, and always oracular. Sometimes he is harmlessly political, therefore dull; sometimes copiously financial, therefore duller; sometimes diffusely didactic, therefore dullest of all! But, passing over these varieties of the species, we come to the most numerous class of all, "Our own Parisian," or, "Our French," or, "Our own at Paris" "Our Parisian" (we are speaking now of that genuine species who think it worth their while to write Paris letters at Paris) is distinct in features from his brethren. He is always vivacious, garrulous, and gossipy. The moment he puts foot upon French soil, he catches the mercurial spirit of the people. In all seriousness, this kind of literature should be condemned. It is poisonous both to the morals and tastes of the community. It insidiously undermines our home virtues, and contributes to an unhealthy fancy. It disarms the delicacy, and stains the mind that receives it. Unfortunately, it falls in the way of the very class of persons most susceptible to its influence. Mr. Smith, merchant, peruses with avidity the financial reports in his morning "Look on the poor We do not hear wails of human In these times, With gentle eyes; for in such habits often, Not often, perhaps, you say, sneeringly. Not often it may be. But if it be better for ninety-nine guilty to escape than one innocent to suffer-should not many impostors go enriched from your door, than one suffering innocent go hungry? Assuredly His divine axiom means not less than this. Very few of us would be willing to meet the strict reward of our deserts; why, therefore, do we so inflexibly and sternly hold the scales of justice to others—to others tempted so much? Which of us, after all, would dare be weighed against them? Who shall say that their one talent is not better repaid than our ten talents? sheet, and religiously reads the commercial leader through, | heap up the grate, and draw snugly near. whether he understands it or not. Further he does not go. the groans borne upon the tempest, the The paper falls next to Mrs. Smith, matron. The deaths agony that swell the shriek of the blast. and marriages excite her curiosity first, and the auction are the best of us charitable enough? advertisements next. Of the French letter, she is heedless and ignorant. Not so the Misses Smith, and Master Smith. Finances, commercial leaders, deaths, marriages, and auction advertisements have no charms for them. They require something more entertaining; something romantic and nice. The French letter arrests their search. It is just the thing. It is dashing and clever; it has the gossip of the green-room; the talk of the new opera; the new actress and her old liaison; the new liaison and the old favorite; the last instance of marital unfaithfulness; piquant love adventures; and a species of gossip which seems ever to be hovering upon the verge of propriety. Young readers are unconscious of the injury their moral sensibility experiences from this sort of literary entertainment. They do not note how it awakens a love for the mean pleasures of low gossip and vile scandal; how it blunts their once keen sense of the good and pure; what tastes it stimulates; how unhallowed are the thoughts and feelings it inspires. Hugely different as its morality is that from that learned in the pure atmos-immense. The town yet rings with the talk of the crowded phere of a virtuous home, its fascinations blind the reader to its insidious vice, its covert skepticism, and its bold repudiation of old-fashioned laws of decency and propriety. There are certainly good French letters, and very agreeable French letters. But, most of them are nothing more than collections of abominable anecdotes. For those who concoct them we have unmitigated contempt, and no little indignation. Their miserable office, is to pander to the lowest tastes; their employment is, assuredly, neither honorable nor manly. It is unworthy any man; it would be repulsive to one possessing true instincts and high feelings. -THERE is a mistake The zones have got mixed up. The arctic regions have forgotten their appointed place. Dr. Kane must have unsettled matters up there. The North Pole has flown into a rage, perhaps, and is paying back some of the impudent visits it has been receiving. Or else it has taken a migratory fit. Something is wrong, assuredly. Did any one ever know such cold? such storms? Last winter was bad enough-this winter outdoes bad enough. Let us have no more arctic expeditions, good masters, if this sort of thing is the reparation we must make. Let burly Jack Frost alone in his own dominions. He is fierce and revengeful. And then, in the midst of chilblains and shivers, to listen to that wizard, Meriam, of Brooklyn Heights. Hear him say, how, in the coldest nights, he stands in his observatory, clothed only in his cotton night-dress, with his bare feet thrust into slippers, even while the thermometor drops below zero. There is no need of feeling the cold, authoritatively declares Mr. Meriam, and as a proof, off he starts for the Adirondack Mountains, in the same clothes that he wore last July. He writes in a room, hour after hour, without a fire, with the thermometer without twenty degrees below zero. We shiver to think of it. Assuredly the fellow is a wizard. It puts one in a rage to hear him. What right has he to such immunity from a general evil? Let him go to the North Pole forthwith. He ought to be crowned the Frost King at once. Severe as the weather has been to us, the housed and cloaked-how terrible it has fallen upon the tattered and homeless ones. As the wind howls and the storm beats, we But we have grand charities. They are numerous and munificent. We have institutions endowed for almost every class of sufferers. The sums expended yearly are ball, with its splendid toilets, its crush of beauty, its display of wealth and elegance-and all for charity-Fifth Avenue pouring its thousands into the lap of Five Points. We are not niggards in this sort of charity. But it is the habit to turn coldly aside from the tottering wretch who crosses our path, because it is probably an impostor. It is well to do so, says Justice. Mendicity should not be encouraged, is a motto upon all of our lips. It sits well upon the miserly and hard-hearted. It qualms the conscienceand it saves the sixpences. But it would be better, for our own sakes, to forget the maxim once in a while-for charity as well as mercy, is twice blessed-it blesses him that gives and him that receives. If it always waited upon stern equity, rust and selfishness would gather upon our heartsfor charity quickens our virtues, and lifts us up nearer to goodness. And what, indeed, if our chance pittance be mis-spent? Must we exact wise frugality from the lowly, the heart-sore, the fiercely-tempted, and smile at the waste and lax expenditure of those high in the social grade? Shall the pampered, and the great, and the learned, have their vices and their backsliding mildly extenuated, while these desperate hearts must stand up in the midst of despair and wretchedness, and yield not a jot? O, Justice! blind and false, when will you rule impartially in the hearts of men? -THE world is too big and too fast. There is too much doing-too many wars, crimes, casualties, excitements, and marvels. One's head gets in a whirl with all the new things that besiege, and demand its attention. Try as you will, you get behind the race in spite of yourself. It is an incessant strain to keep pace, and still you lose ground. Science empties its discoveries upon you so fast, that you stagger beneath them in hopeless bewilderment; the political world gets up new scenes so fast, that you are out of breath trying to keep run of them; there are so many new great books, which not to know is heresy; so many new great people, whom not to see is benighted darkness; so many new productions of art, new plays, new actors, new discoveries, new sciences, new improvements, new quarrels, new South Sea bubbles, new gossip; so many shouting at the world with all their might, to get the world's attention; so many devices to surprise you into unexpected interest for new a Don Quixotic age-with this difference, that if we do things-that your head whirls like a whip-top, and the whole confused medley seems rushing around your cranium, heads and points together, in a sort of an upside-down whirl-i-gig steeple-chase. The You are Something astounding is continually occurring. morning papers alarm you with their exclamation points, and sensation headings in big type. You turn, gasping and breathless, from one page crammed with its startling intelligence, only to find its fellow charged to the mouth, and belching its whole direful contents at you. appalled by Persian difficulties, by the Switzerland question, by Nicaraguan revolutions and California matters. One murder treads upon another. The details of one catastrophe crowd out the particulars of its predecessor. Everything is high-pressure. Things are upon a rush. Extraordinary events are occurring everywhere. The world seems to have got into one of Shakspeare's fifth acts-it is all bustle and action. To add to the confusion, they talk about a transAtlantic telegraph. Difficult as it is even now to swallow one's breakfast in the hurly-burly, the morning mass of sensation matter is to be increased. In addition to the speeches in Congress, the new flare-up in Wall street, the new success at the opera, the new play, the new murder, the last lecture, the great storm, the last shipwreck, the yesterday's railroad collision, the thousand and one things that already are so numerous, that the coffee cools while we bolt them in-in addition to all these, we must have all Europe upon our breakfast-table, as well as America. Monstrous! Human nature cannot endure so much. Things must hold up awhile. Sufficient for the day is the news thereof. If time were a commodity purchasable in the public marts, we would need the inexhaustible purse of the Irish fairy to procure enough for all the demands that are made upon it. As things are now, something must be done to bring the capacity of the brain up to the required level. Photography is our only hope. When the whole contents of the morning paper, or the last novel can, by some mesmeric process, be instantly photographed upon the brain, there will be some possibility of keeping up with the intelligence of the age. We look forward to such a discovery with sanguine enthusiasm. And when science shall advance even farther, and the whole social machinery be perfected, we shall probably be able, with our feet upon the fender, to listen, by the means of ingenious machinery, to Rev. Mr. Prosy's lecture at one end of Broadway, and the last new great actress at the other, even when, by some lightning process, we indite editorials for the New Monthly, and the new books are one by one duly photographed upon our brain. Speed the day. -A GENTLEMAN of extraordinary inventive genius has devised a mode for keeping open the Hudson river during the winter season. The plan is bold and novel, and will excite the admiration of some portion of our readers-and possibly the laughter of the rest. But, let him laugh who wins. His project is to lay an iron pipe the entire length of the river, to be heated by steam! How the heat is to be generated and how sustained, we do not hear, but the gentleman is asserted to be sanguine of success, and has applied to the legislature for the privilege of exacting toll from all passing vessels, as a means of defraying expenses. For our part, very much like a good jest as this may seem, we are not disposed to laugh at it. He is bold who will doubt anything in this present century, when there is so much likelihood of his being proved a false prophet. It is sometimes charge at wind-mills, we usually prove the victors. But this original scheme reminds us of another gravely projected a few years ago, but which, to the best of our knowledge and belief, never accomplished its end. It was to pierce Mount Vesuvius with a canal, which should reach and extinguish the crater! The two schemes are so identical in character, that we cannot help suspecting them to have originated in the same mind. As for this last one, of thawing out the Hudson, we have no objection, but Vesuvius is one of the few notabilities that we do not care to see extinguished so summarily. -MRS. KIRKLAND, in her Personal Memoirs of Wash ington, recently published, relates an anecdote which proves Mrs. Washington to have, occasionally, at least, A visitor at Mount usurped the privileges of her sex. Vernon, slept at night in a room adjoining that occupied by his hosts. After retiring at night, he was surprised to overhear Mrs. Washington proceed to administer a lengthy and emphatic Caudle lecture to her worthy spouse. The general spoke not until the tirade was finished, and then calmly and good-naturedly exclaimed, "And now, a good night to you, my dear." This incident, coupled with another related in the Republican Court, indicates that Mrs. Washington was addicted to occasional sallies of temper, like the rest of womankind. It is well known that she hated the democrats with an abiding hatred, who, at the beginning of their career, affected a rudeness of manner, and coarseness of dress, peculiarly offensive to the federalists; and it is very certain that this hatred was unqualifiedly returned. She was a strict disciplinarian, and her granddaughter, Nelly Curtis, was compelled to practice four or five hours every day at the harpsichord. One morning, when she should have been playing, her grandmother entered the room, remarking that she had not heard her music, and also that she had observed some person going out, whose name she required to know. Nelly hesitated, and was silent. Suddenly Mrs. Washington's attention was arrested by a stain upon the wall, which had been newly painted. "Ah!" exclaimed she, looking at the spot, which was just above a settee, "it was no federalist; none but a filthy democrat would mark a place with his good-for-nothing head in that manner! --CHARLES DICKENS is a capital amateur actor. Every season he gives a series of theatrical performances at his residence, Tavistock house, in which eminent literary people are the performers, while the highest celebrities in letters, art, and society, compose the audiences. The plays are sometimes old stage favorites, and occasionally new ones, written especially, as the play-bills have it, for this amateur company, and acted nowhere else. Wilkie Collins appears to be the dramatist to Tavistock house. Two years ago he wrote for them, "The Lighthouse;" this season his play is entitled, "The Frozen Deep." It is described as a fine drama, produced with every care as regards decorations and scenery, and acted superbly by Mr Dickens, Mark Lemon, Wilkie Collins, and other celebrities. The female parts were filled mostly by the ladies of Mr. Dickens's family. "In its minutest details," says a London paper, "the play is performed in a spirit of completeness, that gives an ineffable charm to the whole.” We cannot conceive of anything more agreeable than this sort of literary recreation; and are surprised that our own literary people have not conceived a taste for it. It is true | few generalizations. To us, she appears impressed with the that dramatic talent is rare, and it might prove difficult to true fire-the divine power of genius. She realizes her organize an efficient company; but, if at all successful, the scenes by the intense force of her imagination. Her percepentertainment would be novel, agreeable, and superior to tions are exquisitely true. She sees her art in its right light. most of the fashionable devices for amusement. There is a With calm courage she disdains and flings aside the old Philadelphia literary lady quite celebrated in this way; but traditions of the stage. Nature is her great mistress, and to in the metropolis we know of none who have given it any its shrine she has wedded her art. She is destined to lift up degree of consideration. We wish that some American the stage to its old glory. She is already inaugurating that Dickens would inaugurate it, for certainly our parlor amuse- new style which is to make the stage, in truth, the mirror ments need some quickening and vivifying spirit. of nature-which in due time is to scatter to the winds the abominations of rant, noise, and fury. -WE may clap our hands. A genius has burst upon us; a new sun has arisen in the world of Art. America has at last her Rachel. The world of New York has experienced a sensation. There is a new wonder amongst us, which has already outlived twice nine days. A few nights ago, a Miss Matilda Heron was announced to appear in the wornout part of Camille, at Wallack's theatre. She was said to be a fine actress by western critics; but metropolitan theatregoers are suspicious of provincial notorieties. Very few believed in her. The announcement of her appearance was received in most circles with sneers. But the night came a bitterly cold one-and a rather small audience assembled to greet her. She was received coolly upon her entrance on the stage. Before she had spoken ten words, people began to stare. The critics pricked up their ears, and bent forward. She had but a few trifling things to do in the first scene, and yet at its close a burst of warm applause announced a surprise and an unexpected pleasure. It was already half a success. As the play progressed, the audience grew from coldness to interest, from interest to warmth, from warmth to enthusiasm. At the close of the third act, there was a hurricane of applause at the close of the fifth, people stood up to hail her as the great mistress of tragedy. It was the most decided and brilliant success upon the stage we ever saw. Here were at once the new style and the new genius we have all so long looked for, which were to vivify the drama and give new life to the stage. Miss Heron woke up the next morning famous-her long dream and hope realized to the full. The morning papers rang with her praises. Critics the most fastidious and exacting of any in America, confessed themselves conquered-lifted her, with a stroke of the pen, to the pinnacle of her profession. Miss Heron's style is new and original. It is divested of conventionalities-fresh as nature-the perfect and artistic realism of nature. She talks very much as you or we might talk; moves, acts, and looks, down to the simplicity of unaffected nature, and up to the level of a refined and perfect art. Her tones are laden with sympathetic tenderness; her face is capable of every expression; while her grand, full eyes, sit the very fountains of passion and feeling. There is electricity in her eyes-they blaze and melt in the shifting transitions of emotion. Her joy is a deep, full gladness; her love-we never saw love enacted before. With her it was a subdued, thrilling, rapturous ecstasy-and in grief, never before did such tones break from any human heart, unless it were reality. It was no superficial, conventional gasping and quivering, but an outgush of wild agony-a cry wrung from a stricken heart, so full and true, so intense in its power and depth, that every heart within its sound, responded as if by an electrical touch. That closing scene of the third act, has probably never been equalled on the stage. We cannot follow Miss Heron through the details of her performance of Camille. We must be content with these This much for Miss Heron's art. But we cannot refrain from expressing our surprise that she could consent to appear in so objectionable a play as Camille; and must warn her that if she would achieve a position permanently and entirely great, she must rigorously exclude from her repertoire whatever is not lofty in moral, purpose, thought, and art. Miss Heron's success is not the only one that occupies the attention of the town. The long talked of début of Mde. de Wilhorst at the opera-house, came off the latter part of January, and the result was a triumph. Very rarely has such an audience been gathered in Irving Place, as that which was assembled to greet our brilliant townswoman in her advent upon her trying and difficult career. "Society" was present in all its glory, and rewarded this effort of one of its pet members with condescending approval. At Laura Keene's a dramatic adaptation of Charles Reade's fine story, "Cloud and Sunshine," has been produced, and well acted. Miss Keene, as Rachael, displayed in her role all the nice dramatic feeling, the exquisite naturalness, and the moving pathos for which she is so distinguished. Miss Keene's acting is so fine and true, that it always satisfies and delights. Mr. Wheatleigh made an immense "hit" as Corporal Patrick, the old Waterloo veteran. There are some new American plays in preparation at this house. - WE perceive that Miss Heron announces Medea as in preparation. We do not know the plot of this play, but understand that it is an adaptation of the old classic story, in Euripides' tragedy of that name. The part is a very grand one. The announcement recalls to our mind an anecdote related in the life of Cumberland, the celebrated English dramatist. When in Madrid, in 1780, a remarkable gipsy woman, of magnificent beauty, known as the Teranna, was playing a version of this story of Medea. Cumberland, who had been introduced to her as an English dramatist, desired to see her in the part, but the capricious woman insisted that he should not do so until an evening she should appoint. She named the third night of the performance. The catastrophe of the story is one of the most terrible in the whole range of the drama. Medea, in revenge upon a faithless husband, murders her own children. In this scene she was discovered, surrounded by the bleeding bodies of her children; her bare arms bespattered with blood, her massive raven hair floating dishevelled about her shoulders, while her attitude, looks, tones, and the wild hysteric frenzy of her grief, made up a picture exceeding in terrible effect anything the Englishman had ever beheld. The audience was seized with a wild horror, and rose in a tumultuous and excited mass-when the alarmed authorities ordered the curtain to fall upon the unfinished scene. In a few minutes, this remarkable creature burst into the private box where Cumberland was seated, still in the dress and under the wild inspiration of the part, exclaiming in triumphant accents, "Speak, signor, could your Siddons have done that?" |