The public are inclined to think that the life of an artist spent continually before the footlights is one eminently conducive to hardening the sensibilities against calumny; but it is a curious fact that actors are like children in their craving for applause and praise, and in their fear of criticism and blame. Garrick wrote a year before his death to the scoundrel who persecuted him, “Will Curtius take the word of the accused for his innocence?” and Mrs. Siddons, through her husband, offered one thousand pounds for the libeller to whom she refers in the following letter:— “One would think I had already furnished conjectures and lies sufficient for public gossip; but now the people here begin again with me. They say that I am mad, and that _that_ is the reason of my confinement. I should laugh at this rumour were it not for the sake of my children, to whom it may not be very advantageous to be supposed to inherit so dreadful a malady; and this consideration, I am almost ashamed to own, has made me seriously unhappy. However, I really believe I am in my sober senses, and most heartily do I now wish myself with you at dear Streatham, where I could, as usual, forget all the pains and torments of illness and the world. But I fear I have now no chance for such happiness.” “Kotzebue and German sausages are the order of the day,” Sheridan said when he brought out the English adaptation of _The Stranger_. Mrs. Haller, in Mrs. Siddons’s hands, became pathetic, almost grand; but to us now-a-days, uninfluenced by the glamour of her presence, the sickly sentiment and impossible situations of the play make it an untempting meal for our practical and realistic mental digestions.