Speaking of Miss O'Neill's acting, Moore says, "I liked her in Lady Townley, but I had never seen it acted before, and I thought she looked so pretty, and so like a woman of fashion that I had much pleasure in the performance, though the critics said her gaiety was not gay enough." Strange to say, that in those very qualities which Irishwomen are supposed to possess, brightness, humour, and fun, Miss O'Neill was singularly deficient, and after several experiments, the managers decided that she should leave comedy alone, and always appear in tragic parts. She cried more naturally than any other actress, her tears seemed to be wrung from her very heart.
In "Venice Preserved," she struck out an original idea of her own. Mrs. Siddons used to stand in the middle of the stage, and say the words "Remember twelve!" in a deep tragic tone. Miss O'Neill walked with slow steps to the door, and stopped for a few minutes, then in a husky whisper, as if the words were choking her, she repeated, "Remember twelve!"—Six bursts of applause told that she had found the right reading of the part.
She acted in Richard Sheil's tragedy of "Adelaide; or, the Emigrants," with great success. Shell was one of her most devoted admirers, and he relates how, by her dictation, he wrote a refusal of an offer of marriage, made to her by the Earl of Normanby. Such a marriage as this would have
