The kitchen-garden, true to keeping, Has length and breadth and width so plenty; A snail, if fairly set a-creeping, Could scarce go round while you told twenty. 7. Perhaps you’ll cry, on hearing this, What! everything so very small? No; she that made it what it is Has greatness that makes up for all. Mr. Siddons passed some weeks at Westbourne, but, finding the rheumatism from which he suffered only relieved at Bath, he was obliged to reside there almost permanently. Bath did not agree with Mrs. Siddons, and the exigencies of her profession obliged her to live in London. This difference in their place of abode caused a rumour to get abroad that a formal separation had taken place. Mr. Boaden, indeed, states explicitly that Siddons became at this time somewhat impatient of the “crown matrimonial,” while Campbell declares the report to be “absolutely unfounded.” In judging the case we think, perhaps, a medium course would be the best to take. We can imagine a decided incompatibility in the husband’s and wife’s mode of seeing things. She was ever impatient towards want of energy and practical capacity, while he, all his life having to play second to her, was jealous of the disposal of her earnings, and rushed into ill-judged investments and speculations. The following letter of good-humoured banter, written to him on the 16th December 1804, reveals the manner in which she turned off his weak ebullitions of temper:— “MY DEAR SID., “I am really sorry that my little flash of merriment should have been taken so seriously, for I am sure, however we may differ in trifles, _we can never cease to love each other_. You wish me to say what I expect to have done. I can expect nothing more than you yourself have designed me in your will. Be (as you ought to be) the master of all while God permits; but, in case of your death, only let me be put out of the power of any person living. This is all that I desire; and I think that you cannot but be convinced that it is reasonable and proper. “Your ever affectionate and faithful, “S. S.” The wife’s was the stronger, more powerful mind, and with her sincerity and openness of disposition which impelled her to show everything she thought or felt, we have no doubt she often offended the irritable vanity of a man who, in small things, had a painful sense of his own dignity. Hers was too big a nature to nag and fight about trifles, and at the same time often too self-absorbed to remember how she offended the susceptibilities of others.