Irishmen have a natural theatrical instinct, and Dublin, at the time of which we write, was to a certain degree valued as a censor in dramatic affairs as highly as London. A Dublin audience often ventured to dissent from the judgments of the metropolis, and, as in the case of Mrs. Pritchard, who, Campbell quaintly tells us, “electrified the Irish with disappointment,” to entirely reverse them. Most of the best Drury Lane players had begun their career at the Smock Alley theatre, and many of them had Irish blood in their veins. The theatre was the finest in the kingdom next to Drury Lane, boasting the innovation of a drop scene, representing the Houses of Parliament, instead of the conventional green curtain. The same causes which placed the provincial towns of England in an important position, so far as social and dramatic affairs were concerned, operated still more effectually in the case of Dublin. To cross to London in those days was as long and tedious a journey as to go to New York in ours; and none even of the nobility thought of doing so every year. The vice-regal court was, therefore, really a court, surrounded by a certain amount of brilliancy and splendour. Ever since the days of Peg Woffington and the Miss Gunnings, Irish beauties had dared to set the fashion; and we read in a letter written from Dublin, by a leader of fashion of the day, that it is of no use English women coming over unless they are prepared to “make their waists of the circumference of two oranges, no more”; their “heads a foot high, exclusive of feathers, and stretching to a pent-house of most horrible projection behind, the breadth from wing to wing considerably broader than your shoulders; and as many different things in your cap as in Noah’s ark.... Verily,” the lady ends, “I never did see such monsters as the heads now in vogue; I am a monster, too, but a moderate one.” Round the small court fluttered young equerries who wrote plays, and were devoted to the drama. Actors and actresses themselves, if at all within the pale of respectability, were admitted to the vice-regal circle. Mrs. Inchbald was intimate with many of the fashionable and literary ladies. Daly, the manager of the theatre, was a regular _habitué_ of the “Castle”; and John Kemble, who had arrived in Ireland some time before his sister, had been introduced by the equerry Jephson to the “set,” including Tighe, Courtenay, and others. All this society was thrown into a ferment of excitement when it was announced that the beautiful young actress, who had turned all heads in London, was coming to Dublin. Kemble was interviewed and pestered with inquiries on the subject. Indeed, his prestige for the time was vastly increased by his relationship. At a dinner at the Castle, Lord Inchiquin gave as a toast, “The matchless Mrs. Siddons,” and sent her brother a ring containing her miniature set in diamonds.