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if lost in unutterable thought, with her eyes fixed upon the spot where Romeo had lately passed away from her sight; as if her fancy reproduced his form in that very place; as if the ground, last hallowed by his footsteps, was dear to her as her heart's-blood. Her "rapt soul was sitting in her eyes"-her whole body spoke-then, with a deep, impatient sigh, she turned away, and cleared her brow for an encounter with this every-day world. Was not this genius? Was it not genius of the first order? And her acting was full of such touches-not, as I can answer for, repeated night after night, but varied, and springing from the impulse of the moment. Such a power as this-of embodying the poet's meaning of actually creating new ideas, as if the poet's mantle had descended on the player-does itself deserve the name of poetry. What a pity that its creations should be so evanescent-dying with the tone or gesture that produced them! How much more nobly would critics be employed in noting down and giving perpetuity to such fugitive graces, than in discovering wants and imperfections-how much better would they deserve of the world, if they handed down to posterity the true merits, instead of the faults, of an actor! Wiseacres were for ever complaining that Miss O'Neill could not act Queen Catherine and Lady Macbeth like Mrs Siddons. They never took the trouble to reflect that Mrs Siddons could not act Belvidera, Juliet, Mrs Haller, like Miss O'Neill. The powers of each were so essentially different, that the world ought to have been thankful to have had two such. But, say the critics, the style of Mrs Siddons was a greater style than that of Miss O'Neill. I deny it. Miss O'Neill not only had a wider range than her predecessor, but often invaded her province. She could rise to grandeur-but Mrs Siddons could never melt to tenderness. I wish that all persons, who imagine that a fair brow and a blue eye could never awe the soul as majestically as those of a darker complexion, had seen Miss O'Neill's look of offended dignity, when Jaffier, in Venice Preserved, seems to doubt her power to keep the secret of his plots. I forget the exact words

that Belvidera is speaking at the time, but she compares her lot with that of the wife of Brutus-" For

Brutus trusted her." As she uttered the last sentence, her whole form seemed lifted from the earth by the spirit within. She could have made the world her footstool. Again, Mrs Siddons has been excelled, within my memory, in some of her finest characters. The young and pert will laugh, perhaps, at an old man for asserting that Mrs Yates was more completely the Lady Macbeth which Shakspeare drew-yet such is my opinion. To mention a single instance of superiority-in the sleepwalking scene, Mrs Siddons carefully deposited her candle on a table, and then proceeded to rub her hands for the imagined purpose of effacing the "damned spot." Now Mrs Yates was the actual sleep-walker, hurried from her bed by a guilty conscience; -the quick and sometimes vacillating step-the candle not laid aside, but carelessly held with flaring flame, while she wrung her hands togetherthe open and unwinking eye-all indicated the sleep of the body and the wakefulness of the soul. On the other hand, it may be safely asserted that Miss O'Neill has never been excelled in her own peculiar characters. Where a part precisely seems to fit the powers, the appearance, the very look and gesture of a performer, the ideal personage and the real become thenceforward identified, as it were, in the imagination. This is the case with Kean in Shylock-this was the case with Miss O'Neill in Juliet. When she first made her appearance, with her hair so simply knotted up, she looked scarce fifteen-sorrow seemed never to have come near her. She waited upon her mother's eye with the dutiful innocence of a child. Her laugh came from the heart-her step was buoyant. After she had beheld the arbiter of her destiny, and pronounced the fatal words"My grave is like to be my marriage bed"-you saw the infusion of a new principle into her character. She thenceforth displayed the thoughtfulness of a devoted being. The bliss of loving and of being loved, was ever present with her-but she knew that she was playing a deep and desperate game. She had seen death from afar, and the shadow of

his coming form visibly deepened around her spirit, even until the dark power himself enfolded her in his mantle. I have mentioned the fine touch of nature with which Miss O' Neill completed the masquerade scene-I have, therefore, only to add that during its progress, her performance was delightful. Her manner of receiving the guests, as they entered, was not that of an actress, playing the graceful, but of a noble and high-bred girl, moving in her accustomed sphere. It may seem to be small and trivial praise to say, that she was exquisitely lady-like; but, if the word Lady be taken in its old chivalric sense, undebased by modern associations, surely the praise is neither small nor trivial. In the balcony scene, she accomplished the difficult task of making Juliet's love-the growth of an hour-appear natural, probable, and withal modest. There was an innate sense of delicacy gleaming through the fervour of her words, like the tender pearly tint beneath the radiant colours of the opal. One did not feel that she "should have been more strange." The deep enthusiasm of her general manner was relieved and lightened by an occasional sportiveness. When she called back Romeo, after having dismissed him, nothing could be more sweetly conscious, more smilingly delicate, than the manner in which she pronounced the words,

"I had forgot why I did call thee back."

It was one of those felicities which take the ear and heart by surpriseinimitable-almost unrememberable. It was one of those wonderful effects in which the human voice triumphs -for what instrument could rival its soul-speaking inflections? Nothing but the feeling of the moment could have produced a tone and manner so perfectly consonant to the situation and the scene. It could never have been rehearsed. But what a vision rises before my inward eye of the timid, thoughtful, blushing, yet still dignified bride, whose passion, about to be hallowed by sacred rites, has trembled into a more intense, a deeper holiness! Never has the cell of Friar Lawrence, even though angels may have looked down upon his

orisons, been irradiated by a light so lovely.

"That eye, of most transparent light, Would almost make a dungeon bright."

The vision passes like a dream. Juliet has heard that Romeo is banished-she has parted from him, and though the wedded lovers, after tearing themselves away, have returned yet again and rushed into another and yet another embrace, still the irrevocable hour has divided them. I can see her now, determined to encounter all the nameless horrors of the vault, bidding good-night, it may be for the last time, to her unconscious mother. How solemnly, how prophetically, how drearily, falls that sad good-night upon the ear! How different from the good-night which it was bliss to repeat, again and again, and hear repeated from a lover's lips!

"Farewell!-God knows if we shall meet again!"

This is the dirge to which that plaintive voice now wakes such melancholy music. But I am not going to rehearse a tragedy, and I neither want to weep myself, nor to make my reader weep. I shall therefore leave Juliet to swallow the potion, to wake in the tomb, and to consign herself to it for ever. The truth is, that I have not Mrs Dykes's love of dying scenes represented on the stage. The earlier portions of a tragedy always give me the most pleasure, and appear to me to display a performer's powers most truly. The delicate gradations of human feeling are a far higher test of ability than the screaming and daggering, and deathrattling, all of which I would banish to the hospital. In this one respect, at least, the French stage is more civilized than ours.-I have only one more observation to make on the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. As it is now acted, Romeo's love for Rosalind is entirely omitted; because, in good troth, his inconstancy, as the turtle-doves call it, would shock our most sentimental sensibilities. It has been pronounced a blemish even by high authorities. So, we know, it seems, more of the human heart than Shakspeare! Is it probable or possible that such a character as that of Romeo could have never felt the pas

sion of love, till he saw Juliet? Has not every imaginative, and passionate nature, whether male or female, been compelled by "the strong necessity of loving," to deck some idol in the niches of its own creation, before the true deity of its worship has appeared? I know something of these things, Mr North, though I am an old bachelor, and I pronounce that no one ever fell truly in love at threeand-twenty, who had not had many loves since he was fifteen. I dare say that neither you nor I have remained in the blessed state from not knowing what love is. You, I hear, are about to prove to the world, that you have no insuperable objections to matrimony. I vow I will dance at your wedding, and choose the youngest and prettiest girl in the room. Who knows but that my turn may come next?-No, no! Shakspeare never soared more nobly above the dull marshes of common-place, than when he broke up the ground of Romeo's heart to receive the celestial plant of love by the plough-share of Miss Rosalind's eye, and fertilized it by love-sick tears from his own.

I have been more particular in my notice of Miss O'Neill's performance of Juliet, both because I think it was her finest character, and because it is that which, as acted by Miss Kemble, is now exciting the fever of the town. I now return to the question, "Is the style of Mrs Siddons a finer style than that of Miss O'Neill ?" Mrs Siddons was unrivalled in the representation of the more terrible passions-such as ambition, hatred, revenge, &c. Now, are these passions more noble in their essence than love, pity, sorrow, and the other milder feelings? I think not. The first are all selfish in their origin and end; their conflicts are great, but their results are mean. The last are not only noble but ennobling. As a great poet of our own day observes :"A potent wand does sorrow wield;

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Now Miss O'Neill may be said to move along the way of real life with a soul of power,-nay more, she threw an imaginative influence over the way of common life. If I may be allowed the use of that much abused figure-antithesis, she idealized the real, and realized the ideal. Her love was heroic,-her pity was as the dew from heaven, her sorrow, though the sorrow of a mortal,

"Was bright

With something of an angel light." Ambition, revenge, &c. deal in lofty phrases, and marked expressions of countenance; but there is nothing of this sort to bolster out the milder (so called) passions. A heart and soul and plastic features are all that these last have to depend upon. As therefore the difficulties, in this kind, are greater, so ought success to be attended with a greater triumph. Mrs Siddons, I should say, possessed dramatic talent in the highest degree,the palm of genius I should award to Miss O'Neill. In real feeling of the character which she represented, I must think that Miss O'Neill far transcended Mrs Siddons. Stationed be

hind the scenes, I have watched the latter as she left the stage, after a wondrous burst of dramatic power,I have seen her arms fall composedly by her side, her face pass in one instant from the extreme of expression to her common look. The wings of the stage once passed, she was no longer Belvidera, or Mrs Beverly—but Mrs Siddons. I have observed Miss O'Neill, in similar circumstances, retaining the impress of the passion which had really entered into her heart. There can be no doubt but that she wept real tears. I have her own authority for it. Professor L, my very dear friend, and old school-fellow, who resides at Cambridge, told me that when Miss O'Neill visited that university, and acted at the Barnwell theatre, he asked her whether it was true that she really shed tears during the performance of affecting parts. She acknowledged that she did. "But you must not think, (she continued,) that such tears are painful. They are rendered pleasing by the consciousness of fiction. They are such as one would shed in reading a pathetic story. Moreover, the strong state of excitement naturally brought on by per

forming-the applause-the tears of those around me,-all conspire to elevate me, and to draw such tears from my eyes as all great emotions are calculated to produce. Were they such tears as guilt or agony really shed, I must have been dead long ago." Now I ask you, Mr North, did not this explanation shew at once genius and good sense,-genius to feel, good sense to disclaim more feeling than was natural, or indeed possible? Rousseau wept thus over the sorrows of his own Heloise. We more often hear of, than see heroines, whose beauty is improved by crying, and instead of saying with Tommy Moore,

"You look so lovely in your tears,

That I must bid you shed them still," I should be disposed to address my mistress, were she much given to the melting mood, in the following distich

"You look so frightful in your tears, That I must beg you'll take a pill;" videlicet, to get rid of the blue devils. But Miss O'Neill really did look lovely in her tears. In the character of Mrs Haller, she reminded me (I hope it is not spoken irreverently) of that beautiful exclamation in Holy Writ-" Oh! that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night!" To use an old simile, she looked like a lily bent beneath a thunder-shower. Tears were her rest, her food, her luxury-she was steeped in tears. Yet she did not, after the old tragedy custom, brandish her pocket-handkerchief in the face of the audience. She did not get it ready as if she were pumping up her tears by some nice hydraulic calculation-but, with a trembling, and sometimes, a hurried hand, she felt for it, and drew it forth, and seemed to strive rather to hide than to display her gushing grief. The scene, in which she restores the jewels to her husband, was almost too heart-rending to be contemplated. It pressed upon the senses with the conviction of reality. Her Mrs Haller, in particular, and, indeed, all her characters, in general, possessed the rare merit of an unbroken unity of design. As, in a perfect picture, every accessory is harmonized by the master's hand so as to produce

one great result-as every part tends towards the effect of the whole-so, in Miss O'Neill's acting, every ray of genius was but a component part of one refulgent orb. She did not strain after insulated graces, or surprising exhibitions of momentary power— neither was any portion of her part hurried over, or even carelessly touched, as if it were insignificant. She did not appear to be husbanding her strength for one ranting speech, or a few starts and screams. From the beginning to the end she was the being she represented. Not sometimes only, but continually, she was agitated by the same fears, awakened by the same hopes, impelled by the same motives of action-as might be supposed to influence the character which she delineated. This continuity of feeling was marvellously evident in the expression of her countenance. I remember being particularly struck with this, in her representation of Mrs Oakley in the Jealous Wife. While conversing on indifferent subjects-while apparently rambling from the main plot of the piece-there was always an air of anxiety-a wandering of the eye-a slight abstraction-which indicated that there was an under-current of more important thought. In society, as well as in solitude, she was still the uneasy, jealous wife. Miss O'Neill's performance of this very character sufficiently refuted the invidious assertion that she did not succeed in comedy. When I speak of comedy, I must be understood to mean the drama of real and everyday life, in distinction to the drama of ideal and heroic life. As there has been much misapprehension on this point, I will explain myself more particularly. The word comedy, according to its Greek derivation, merely signifies something sung, or chanted. Dante used it in this sense, when he gave a name to his immortal poem. When dramatic performances were no longer accompanied by the chorus, the sense of the word became more restricted; and, per haps from some association of a lighter kind, with the idea of a musical accompaniment, it at length was used in distinction to the loftier and severer style of the dramatic muse. But, as men love the widest possible extremes of distinction between one

thing and another, comedy was, by degrees, so far arrested from its primitive signification as to be the symbol of something highly ludicrous. If we take the word in this latter sense, I must own that I should have been sorry had Miss O'Neill excelled in the comic department of her art. Old humorists, young coxcombs, old virgins smitten by the tender passion, are all the fitting dramatis persona of this kind of comedy-not so young and beautiful girls. Playful the sweet creatures may be, sportive as the first breeze in May—but comic they must not be. Only consider for a moment whether, in real life, the dashing, intriguing, repartee-making young ladies are to be tolerated? Why, then, should we admire them on the stage? Could a girl who turned bar-maid to get a husband, or who pretended to be an idiot to escape one-could a widow, full of her jokes, or a wife full of plots, (Heaven grant Mrs Gentle be neither one nor the other!) ever pretend to more than a watering-place respectability? For Miss O'Neill to have romped through the Romp, rattled through the Widow Cheerly, or simpered a-la-chambermaid through Miss Hardcastle, would to me have been profanation. But there is another kind of comedy, called genteel. I hate the term, but let it pass-in which the principal female character may have all the liveliness of real talent, combined with the refinement of real feeling, and may be high-minded, yet, (to use your own words, Mr North, for I cannot find better,)" earnestly and keenly alive to all the cheerful and pleasant humanities and charities of this everyday sublunary world of ours." In such characters as these Miss O'Neill

was herself, and was, therefore, admirable. Had she made a good romp, she would have been Miss O'Neill no longer. Do not, therefore, ye dear dramatic critics, insist upon finding an intellectual turtle, (combining all tastes of fish, flesh, and fowl,) in every, or in any great actress that may be thrown upon our "bank and shoal of time."-" But, bless me, all this time you have said nothing about that essential article the voice!" Not expressly, Mr Pinchbeck; but can you not gather from the flowers of my discourse the honey of a voice rich as hybla, powerful as Lacryma Christi, piercing as Champaigne, tender as May-dew? No; you cannot, for you are only a drone, and never gathered any honey in your life, and have nothing of the bee about you, but the sting. I must now," my patient brethren, bring my discourse to a finish," as the parson said, after having divided his sermon into sixty-three heads, all of which he touched upon in the course of the evening. Farewell, my patient readers, and farewell, Mr North. Should I have pleased you, you may, perhaps, hear from me again, for I must tell you, that, although I once contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine, I cannot find in my heart to prefer it to Blackwood's-another striking instance of my freedom from all old prejudices! You must allow me to conclude with a Sonnet, which an ingenious young friend of mine has indited to the memory of Miss O'Neill. It is too much in the modern style to please me, who am of opinion that all good writing expired with the last generation. However, as the thoughts are tolerable, it may go down now-a-days.

SONNET, TO THE SOMETIME MISS O'NEILL.
Shakspeare's own Juliet! oft I vainly try
To pierce the mystery of thy two-fold life;
Once thou didst shake all hearts with passionate strife,
Once thou wert ever in the public eye,
And not a smile of thine, or murmur'd sigh,
But waked a thousand plaudits, and was rife
With potent magic. Now, thou art a wife-
And round thee dwells a calm reality.
Men speak of thee as dead-thy glory scan
As of a wonder that hath past away;

And yet thou see'st the household light of day,
And human hopes and fears thy being fan!
Oh! thou, who art to other souls a gleam
Of Fancy, art thou to thyself a dream?

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