In another letter she complains of Kemble’s always declaiming and never speaking in a simple and natural manner. “It does appear to me,” she says, “that no man can be a perfect tragedian who is not likewise a good actor in the higher branch of comedy. A statesman not at the council board, and a hero when the battle is safely ended, would, as it seems to me, talk and walk much in the same way as other people. Even a tyrant does not always rave nor a lover always whine.... That Shakespeare and all the writers of Elizabeth’s days were of my opinion I am quite sure. Nothing is more remarkable in their delightful dramas ... than the sweet and natural tone of conversation which sometimes relieves the terrible intensity of their plots, like a flowery glade in a gloomy forest, or a sunbeam streaming [across] a winter sky.” She goes on to say: “I cannot take leave of the drama without adding my feeble tribute of regret for the secession of Mrs. Siddons. Yet it was better that she should quit the stage in undiminished splendour than have remained to show the feeble twilight of so glorious a day.” In a letter written during a severe winter we find this description of a hoar-frost: “The scene has been lovely beyond any winter piece I ever beheld; a world formed of something much whiter than ivory—as white indeed as snow—but carved with a delicacy, a lightness, a precision to which the mossy, ungrateful, tottering snow could never pretend. Rime was the architect; every tree, every shrub, every blade of grass was clothed with its pure incrustations, but so thinly, so delicately clothed that every twig, every fibre, every ramification remained perfect, alike indeed in colour, but displaying in form to the fullest extent the endless, infinite variety of Nature. It is a scene that really defies description.” Here is a playful letter to Sir William, written in August, 1816: “Pray, my dear friend, were you ever a bridesmaid? I rather expect you to say no, and I give you joy of your happy ignorance, for I am just now in the very agonies of the office, helping to buy and admire wedding clothes.... The bride is a fair neighbour of mine.... Her head is a perfect milliner’s shop, and she plans out her wardrobe much as Phidias might have planned the Parthenon.... She has had no sleep since the grand question of a lace bonnet with a plume, or a lace veil without one, for the grand occasion came into discussion.”