she pored over Paradise Lost for hours together. The long, tiresome speeches between Adam and his wife, Satan's address to the sun—most children's despair—were her delight. The stately, ponderous verse suited her genius. The poet also gives us a story which, he tells, Mrs. Siddons left amongst her memoranda.
One day her mother promised to take her out with a party of friends picnicking in the neighbourhood. She was to wear a new pink dress, if the weather were fine. On going to bed the evening before the great event, she took her prayer-book with her, and opening it, as she supposed, at the prayer for fine weather, fell asleep with the book folded in her arms. At daybreak the child found, to her dismay, that she had been holding the prayer for rain to her breast, and that the rain—Heaven having taken her at her word—was pelting against the windows. She went to bed again, with the book opened at the right place, and found the mistake remedied. When she awoke the morning was as rosy as the dress she was to wear.
Croker thinks it necessary, with all the weight of his authority, to refute this childish reminiscence, by pointing out that the prayers for rain and fine weather are on the same page of the prayer-book. We repeat the story principally because it shows the quaint methodistical piety and almost childish superstition which dwelt with Mrs. Siddons all through her chequered career. There is little doubt this piety was greatly owing to the principles inculcated by her mother.
Mrs. Kemble was a stately, austere woman, with a certain amount of genius and much force of character, and energetic and brave in her humble sphere of life, in most difficult circumstances. She fought by
