“I reached my own quiet fireside,” she says, “on retiring from the scene of reiterated shouts and plaudits. I was half dead; and my joy and thankfulness were of too solemn and overpowering a nature to admit of words, or even tears. My father, my husband, and myself sat down to a frugal neat supper in a silence uninterrupted except by exclamations of gladness from Mr. Siddons. My father enjoyed his refreshments, but occasionally stopped short, and, laying down his knife and fork, lifting up his venerable face, and throwing back his silver hair, gave way to tears of happiness. We soon parted for the night; and I, worn out with continually broken rest and laborious exertion, after an hour’s retrospection (who can conceive the intenseness of that reverie?), fell into a sweet and profound sleep, which lasted to the middle of the next day. I arose alert in mind and body.” And so the seven long years spent in tempering her genius, in working to gain strength and confidence, had borne their result, for we will not allow, as Mr. Fitzgerald says, that her present success was owing to the absence “of the restraint from the patronizing instruction of Garrick,” or any other exterior circumstance. The change had come from within, not from without. Hers was essentially a genius of tardy growth, both physically and mentally she did not reach her full development until the time when most actresses have enjoyed seven or eight years’ success. She had worked, and, like all other workers, had reaped her reward; though, unlike the common run of workers, having genius to back her, the reward she reaped was not only a temporary success, but fame. The memory of this night has been handed down to us in company with Garrick’s first appearance in _Richard III._ and Edmund Kean’s in Shylock in 1814. The critics next day were unanimous in her praise. Some found the voice a little harsh, the passion a little too “restless and fluttering,” but all were agreed that a great event had occurred in the dramatic world. It is of little use repeating the praise and criticism, all _that_ can be done in a reviewal of her artistic life; we are more interested in the personal history of the woman who had thus stirred up the waters that had threatened to become stagnant since the retirement of Garrick. It is natural for us rather to like to hear personal anecdotes of those who appear publicly before us than pages of hackneyed verbiage on their acting and appearance.