The enthusiastic young actor goes on:— She stood alone on her height of excellence. Her acting was perfect, and, as I recall it, I do not wonder, novice as I was, at my perturbation when on the stage with her. But in the progress of the play I gradually regained more and more my self-possession, and in the last scene, as she stood by the side wing, waiting for the cue of her entrance, on my utterance of the words, “My wife and sister! Well, well! there is but one pang more, and then farewell world!” she raised her hands, clapping loudly and calling out: “Bravo, Sir, bravo!” in sight of part of the audience, who joined in her applause. On that evening I was engaged to a ball, “where all the beauties”—not of Verona, but of Newcastle—were to meet. Mrs. Siddons, after the play, sent to me to say, when I was dressed, she would be glad to see me in her room. On going in, she “wished,” she said, “to give me a few words of advice before taking leave of me. You are in the right way,” she said, “but remember what I say—study, study, study, and do not marry till you are thirty. I remember what it was to be obliged to study at nearly your age with a young family about me. Beware of that: keep your mind on your art, do not remit your study, and you are certain to succeed. I know you are expected at a ball to-night, so I will not detain you, but do not forget my words—study well, and God bless you.” Her words lived with me, and often in moments of despondency have come to cheer me. Her acting was a revelation to me, which ever after had its influence on me in the study of my art. Ease, grace, untiring energy through all the variations of human passion, blended into that grand and massive style, had been with her the result of patient application. On first witnessing her wonderful impersonations I may say with the poet: “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken.” And I can only liken the effect they produced on me, in developing new trains of thought, to the awakening power that Michael Angelo’s sketch of the Colossal head in the Farnesina is said to have had on the mind of Raphael. CHAPTER XV. RETIREMENT. What wonder that Mrs. Siddons now seriously began to think of retirement. Already, in 1805, she had written to a friend: “It is better to work hard and have done with it. If I can but add three hundred a year to my present income, I shall be perfectly well provided for; and I am resolved when that is accomplished to make no more positive engagements in summer. I trust that God in His great mercy will enable me to do it; and then, oh, how lazy, and saucy, and happy will I be! You will have something to do, I can tell you, my dear, to keep me in order.” This longing now became a distinct determination.