The joint death of both his parents, which happened not many months after this disastrous accident, and were probably (one or both of them) accelerated by it, threw our youth upon the protection of his maternal great-aunt, Mrs. Sittingbourn, whom he loved almost to reverence. To the influence of her early counsels and manners he always attributed the firmness with which, in maturer years, thrown upon a way of life commonly not the best adapted to gravity and self-retirement, he was able to maintain a serious character, untinctured with the levities incident to his profession. Ann Sittingbourn (her portrait was painted by Hudson) was stately, stiff, and tall, with a cast of features strikingly resembling those of Liston. Her estate in Kent was spacious and well-wooded; and here, in the venerable solitudes of Charnwood, amid thick shades of the oak and beech (the last his favourite tree), Liston cultivated those contemplative habits which never entirely deserted him in after-years. Here he was commonly in summer months to be met, book in hand--not a play book--meditating. Boyle's _Reflections_ was at one time his darling volume; this, in its turn, was superseded by Young's _Night Thoughts_, which continued its hold upon him throughout life. He carried it always about him; and it was no uncommon thing for him to be seen, in the refreshing intervals of his occupation, leaning against a side-scene, in a sort of Herbert-of-Cherbury posture, turning over a pocket edition of his favourite author. The premature death of Mrs. Sittingbourn, occasioned by incautiously burning a pot of charcoal in her sleeping-chamber, left Liston, in his nineteenth year, nearly without resources. That the stage at all should have presented itself as an eligible scope for his talents, and in particular, that he should have chosen a line so foreign to what appears to have been his turn of mind, admits of explanation.