Years after, Fanny Kemble, her grand-daughter, while walking through the streets of Baltimore, saw an engraving of Reynolds’s “Tragic Muse” and Lawrence’s picture of John Kemble’s “Hamlet.” “We stopped,” she says, “before them, and my father looked with a great deal of emotion at these beautiful representations of his beautiful kindred. It was a sort of sad surprise to meet them in this other world, where we are wandering aliens and strangers.” From the numerous portraits extant of Mrs. Siddons we can form an idea of her appearance, of which such legendary accounts have been handed down. She was much above middle height; as a girl she was exceedingly thin and spare, and this remained her characteristic until she was about twenty-two or three. “Sarah Kemble would be a fine-looking woman one of these days,” a friend of her father remarked, “provided she could but add flesh to her bones, and provided her eyes were as small again.” This is, in fact, what did occur. Her increasing plumpness rounded off all angles, making the eyes less prominent; and at the age of twenty-four or twenty-five she was in the very prime of her marvellous beauty. She had a singular energy and elasticity of motion. Her head was beautifully set on her shoulders. Her features were fine and expressive, the nose a little long, but counterbalanced by the height of the brow, and firmly-modelled chin. The eye-brows were marked, and ran straight across the brow; her eyes positively flamed at times. A fixed pallor overspread her features in later days, which was seldom tinged with colour. It is difficult, looking at the stately fine lady painted by Gainsborough, to imagine the bursts of passion that convulsed her on the stage. Her voice, as years matured its power, was capable of every inflection of feeling; while her articulation was singularly clear and exact. There was no undue raising of the voice, no overdoing of action; all was moderate and quiet until passion was demanded, and then swift and sudden it burst forth. In Kemble’s manner at times there was a sacrifice of energy to grace. This observation, Braden tells us, was made by Mrs. Siddons herself, who admired her brother, in general, as much as she loved him. She illustrated her meaning by rising and placing herself in the attitude of one of the old Egyptian statues; the knees joined together, and the feet turned a little inwards. Placing her elbows close to her sides, she folded her hands, and held them upright, with the palms pressed to each other. Having made those present observe that she had assumed one of the most constrained, and, therefore, most ungraceful positions possible, she proceeded to recite the curse of King Lear on his undutiful offspring, in a manner which made _hair rise and flesh creep_, and then called on us to remark the additional effect which was gained by the concentrated energy which the unusual and ungraceful posture in itself implied.