In this year, in the month of July, the comedy of ‘The Provoked Husband’ was played at the Haymarket, ‘Lady Townley, by a Lady, her 1st appearance in London.’ The lady and the incident had some interest for those who held Jacobite principles. They knew she was the daughter of an old Scotch Jacobite, Watson, whose participation in the ’45 had perilled his life, ruined his fortune, and caused him to fly his country. He died in Jamaica. His widow returned to Europe, and brought up the family, creditably. In course of time; Miss Watson married a paper-manufacturer, or vendor, named Brooks. His early death compelled her to go on the stage; her success, fair in the metropolis, was more brilliant in Dublin, Edinburgh, and other important cities, especially where Jacobite sympathy was alive. It is curious that in Boswell’s account of the tour to the Hebrides with Johnson, under the date, September 7th, 1773, when they were at Sir Alexander Macdonald’s, at the farm of Corrichattachin, in Skye, among the things which he found in the house was ‘a mezzotinto of Mrs. Brooks, the actress, by some strange chance in Skye.’ The portrait, in 1773, was not that of an actress; nor was the lady then Mrs. Brooks; but that was her name, and such was her profession when Boswell published his Life of Dr. Johnson, in 1791; at which time, however, he was not aware of her Jacobite descent. Some persons, unpleasantly advanced in years, recollect old Mrs. Brooks’s powerful delineation of Meg Murdockson, in T. Dibdin’s ‘Heart of Mid Lothian,’ about the year 1820, at the Surrey Theatre, and they suggest that she was the old Jacobite’s daughter. [Sidenote: _BURNS’S ‘DREAM.’_] In the year in which the Jacobite’s daughter made her first appearance in London, as ‘Lady Townley,’ Burns wrote the verses which he called ‘A Dream,’ with this epigraph:―― Thoughts, words, and deeds the Statute blames with reason, But surely Dreams were ne’er indicted Treason. The poet then dreams of being at St. James’s on the king’s birthday, and addressing George III. in place of the Laureate. The feeling expressed was no doubt one that had come to be universal,――namely, of respect for a monarch and his family, about whom, however, the poet could see nothing of that divinity which was supposed of old to hedge such supreme folk. But Burns recognised a constitutional king, from whom he turned, to attack his responsible ministers:―― Far be’t frae me that I aspire To blame your legislation, Or say ye wisdom want, or fire, To rule this mighty nation. But, faith! I muckle doubt, my Sire, Ye’ve trusted ’Ministration To chaps who, in a barn or byre, Wad better fill’d their station Than courts, yon day. [Sidenote: _BURNS ON THE STUARTS._]