liant than her first, and rendered noteworthy both by her first appearance with her brother, John Kemble, in The Gamester, who from that time frequently acted with her, and by her acting of Isabella in Measure for Measure, in which part she made her first success in a Shakespearean character in London. She looked the novice of St. Clare to perfection. In the spring she made her way northwards to keep her engagement with the Edinburgh manager, and on Saturday, 22nd May, 1784, she appeared on the stage of the Royalty Theatre, in Belvidera. The well-known impassibility of the Edinburgh audience affected Mrs. Siddons with an intolerable sense of depression.
After some of her grandest outbursts of passion, to which no expression of applause had responded, exhausted and breathless, she would pant out in despair, under her breath, "Stupid people, stupid people!" This habitual reserve she soon found, however, gave way at times to very violent exhibitions of enthusiasm, the more fervent from its general expression—once, indeed, the whole of the sleep-walking scene in Macbeth was so vehemently applauded that, contrary to all rule, she had to go over it a second time before the piece was allowed to proceed.
Afterwards, when by these ebullitions of real feeling she had proved her audience's appreciation, she could afford to tell stories of their stolidity when she first appeared amongst them. The second night, disheartened at the cold reception of her most thrilling passages, after one desperate effort she paused for a reply. It came at last, when the silence was broken by a single voice exclaiming, "That's no bad!" a tribute which was the signal for unbounded applause. One venerable old gentleman, who was taken by his
