and Wards, full of religion and prejudices, which they kept intact until they died. On one side we see the great actress inherited Irish blood. John Ward was an Irishman, and Sally, his daughter, was born in Clonmel. Roger Kemble, a member of Ward's company, aided by his good looks, courteous manners, and fine black eyes, won the heart of Sally Ward. The father strongly objected to the match; but, finding opposition of no avail, at last reluctantly consented, making the hackneyed joke—afterwards attributed to Roger Kemble himself, on the occasion of Sarah's marriage with Siddons—that "he wished her not to become the wife of an actor, and she had certainly complied with his request."
The young couple were married at Cirencester in the year 1753. Sarah was their first child. John Philip, the second, was born two years after his sister, at Prescott in Lancashire. They had ten brothers and sisters, and, although all of them—except those who died in very early youth—went on the stage, none reached the pre-eminence of the two eldest. They were an intelligent, industrious family, blossoming into genius in one member and very remarkable talent in another. As Roger Kemble was a Catholic and his wife a Protestant, it was agreed that the girls were to be brought up in the mother's faith, the boys in their father's.
The accounts given us of Mrs. Siddons' childhood are meagre; but, from numerous memoirs and racy theatrical reminiscences, we can see what the life of the travelling actor in England a hundred years ago was like, with all its accompaniments of squalor and humiliation. In these days, when actors and actresses of no very great eminence are whirled about in first-
