friend said to him, alluding to Mrs. Siddons, “This is glorious acting, Sandy.” Looking round at the fainting and screaming ladies in the boxes, Wood answered, “Yes, and a d⸺d deal o’t, too.” Some verses in the _Scot’s Magazine_ give a picture of the scene, the pit being described as “all porter and pathos, all whisky and whining,” while— “From all sides of the house, hark! the cry how it swells, While the boxes are torn with most heart-piercing yells!” The enthusiasm to see her was so great, that one day there were more than 2,500 applications for about 600 seats. The oppression and heat was so great in the crowded and ill-ventilated theatre, that an epidemic that attacked the town was humorously attributed to this cause, and was called “the Siddons fever.” All that was most cultured and intellectual in Edinburgh came to do her homage—Blair, Hume, Beattie, Mackenzie, Home, all attended her performances. She made by her engagement, the share of the house, benefit, and subscription, more than one thousand pounds. And this success was not only among the educated classes, the pit and gallery paid their tribute besides. Campbell tells us how a poor servant-girl with a basket of greens on her arm, one day stopped near her in the High Street, and hearing her speak, said, “Ah, weel do I ken that sweet voice, that made me greet sae sair the streen.” Before she left she was presented with a silver tea-urn, as a mark of “esteem” for superior genius and unrivalled talents. She refers to this visit later in her grandiloquent style. “How shall I express my gratitude for the honours and kindness of my northern friends? for, should I attempt it, I should be thought the very queen of egotists. But never can I forget the private no less than public marks of their gratifying suffrages.” CHAPTER VII. CLOUDS. On the 15th June she tore herself away from all these “private” and “public marks of gratifying suffrages,” and again paid a visit to Dublin, which at the beginning was more successful than her former one, but towards the end was clouded with untoward circumstances, which militated against her for the whole of her professional career. This time she became the guest of her former friend Miss Boyle, now become Mrs. O’Neil of Shane’s Castle. The Lord-Lieutenant welcomed her as if she were some “great lady of rank,” and she tells us how she was received “by all the _first families_ with the most flattering hospitality, and the days I passed with them will be ever remembered among the most pleasurable of my life.” She paid a visit to Shane’s Castle. “I have not words to describe the beauty and splendour of this enchanting place, which, I am sorry to say, has since been levelled to the earth by a tremendous fire. Here were often assembled all the talent, and rank, and beauty of Ireland. Among the persons of the Leinster family whom I met here was poor Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the most amiable, honourable, though misguided youth I ever knew.