There was a custom then prevailing among actors, which exists nowhere now, except in some of the small towns in Germany. Thus, not very long ago, at Ischl, in Austria, I was surprised to see a very pretty actress enter my own room at the inn, and putting a play-bill into my hand, solicit my presence at her benefit. This was a common practice in the north of England till Tate Wilkinson put an end to it, as derogatory to the profession. The custom, however, had not been checked at the time and in the locality to which I have alluded. On the Christmas eve of the period in question, Lizzy Farren was herself engaged in distributing her bills, and asking patronage for her benefit, which was to take place on the following Twelfth Night. As appropriate to the occasion she had chosen Shakespeare’s comedy of that name, and was to play _Viola_, a part for which Younger, who loved her heartily, had given her especial instruction. Miss Farren had not been very successful in her “touting.” She had been unlucky in the two families at whose houses she had ventured to knock. The first was that of an ex-proprietor of a religious periodical, who had a horror of the stage, but who had a so much greater horror of Romanism, that, like the Scottish clergy of the time, he would have gone every night to the play during Passion week, only to show his abhorrence of popery. This pious scoundrel had grown rich by swindling his editors and supporting any question which paid best. His household he kept for years, by inserting advertisements in his journal for which he was paid in kind. He was a slimy, sneaking, mendacious knave, who would have advocated atheism if he could have procured a dozen additional subscribers by it. His lady was the quintessence of vulgarity and malignity. She wore diamonds on her wig, venom in her heart, and very-much-abused English at the end of her tongue. Poor Lizzy, rebuffed here, rang at the garden-gate of Mrs. Penury Beaugawg. She was a lady of sentiment who drank, a lady of simplicity who rouged, a lady of affected honesty who lived beyond her income, and toadied or bullied her relations into paying her debts. Mrs. Penury Beaugawg would have graciously accepted orders for a private box; but a patronage which cost her anything, was a vulgarity which her gentle and generous spirit could not comprehend. Lizzy was standing dispirited in the road at the front of the house, when a horseman rode slowly up; and Lizzy, not at all abashed at practising an old but not agreeable custom, raised a bill to his hand as he came close to her, and solicited half-a-crown, the regular admission-price to the boxes. “Lizzy!” cried the horseman, “you shall have such a house at Chester, as the old town has not seen since the night Garrick was here, and played _Richard_ and _Lord Chalkstone_.”