Independently of the boy Betty, or any other trials in her profession, Mrs. Siddons now began to long for rest. We have seen how years before, when in Dublin, she had expressed herself to Dr. Whalley: “I don’t build any castles, but cottages without end. May the great Disposer of all events but permit me to spend the evening of my toilsome, bustling day in a cottage where I may sometimes have the converse and society which will make me more worthy those imperishable habitations which are prepared for the spirits of just men made perfect!” In the April of 1805 she satisfied this wish by taking a cottage at Westbourne, near Paddington. With the help of Nixon she fitted it up luxuriously, built an additional room behind for a studio, and laid out the shrubbery and garden. Westbourne was then, we are told, one of those delightful rural spots for which Paddington was distinguished. It occupied a rising ground, and commanded a lovely view of Hampstead, Highgate and the distant city. Mrs. Siddons’s was a small retired house, in a garden screened with poplars and evergreens, resembling a modest rural vicarage, standing, it is said, on the site now levelled for the Great Western Railway Station. She loved, she said, to escape from “the noise and din of London” to the green fields surrounding her new home. Here her friends congregated round her also. Miss Berry and Madame D’Arblay both mention, in their diaries, having spent an afternoon and met many people at Mrs. Siddons’s country retreat. “I spoke in terms of rapture of Mrs. Siddons to Incledon,” Crabb Robinson tells us. “He replied, ‘Ah! Sally’s a fine creature. She has a charming place on the Edgware Road. I dined with her last year, and she paid me one of the finest compliments I ever received. I sang _The Storm_ after dinner. She cried and sobbed like a child. Taking both of my hands she said, “All that I and my brother ever did is nothing compared with the effect you produce.”’” The following lines were written by Mr. Siddons, describing his wife’s country retreat, during the last visit he ever paid to it:— 1. Would you I’d Westbourne Farm describe; I’ll do it then, and free from gall, For sure it would be sin to gibe A thing so pretty and so small. 2. The poplar walk, if you have strength, Will take a minute’s time to step it; Nay, certes, ’tis of such a length, ’Twould almost tire a frog to leap it. 3. But when the pleasure-ground is seen, Then what a burst comes on the view; Its level walk, its shaven green, For which a razor’s stroke would do. 4. Now, pray be cautious when you enter, And curb your strides from much expansion; Three paces take you to the centre, Three more, you’re close against the mansion. 5. The mansion, cottage, house, or hut, Call’t what you will, has room within To lodge the King of Lilliput, But not his court, nor yet his queen. 6.