On her entrance the second time, Mrs. Siddons summoned enough courage to address the audience:— “Ladies and gentlemen, the kind and flattering partiality which I have uniformly experienced in this place would make the present interruption distressing to me indeed, were I in the slightest degree conscious of having deserved your censure. I feel no such consciousness. “The stories which have been circulated against me are calumnies. When they shall be proved to be true, my aspersors will be justified; but, till then, my respect for the public leads me to be confident that I shall be protected from unmerited insult.” These words, spoken by the Muse of Tragedy, with her stately dignity and flaming eyes, had an instantaneous effect. She withdrew; the curtain fell. King, the actor, came forward to beg the indulgence of the audience for a few moments; and when she appeared again, pale but calm, not an attempt at interruption was heard. On several occasions after, an attempt was made to renew the interruption; but the orderly portion of the audience was strong enough to quell it. She acknowledged the applause when she came on, and endeavoured to appear perfectly indifferent to the hissing; but all the triumphant confidence of the first days of success seemed to have deserted her for the time, and she was again the uncertain, tottering _débutante_. Her splendid genius was, however, but dimmed, and all her suffering but lent to serve as a stepping-stone to a higher level than she had yet attained. We must give here some letters she wrote to her friends, the Whalleys, as giving an insight into that brave heart of this wonderful woman, whose “victorious faith upheld her” in this and many subsequent trials. What wonder, however, that in later years she grew hard and proud—the first bloom of trust and belief was rubbed off in these her first encounters with the rough judgment of the mob. From henceforth the confiding girlish Ophelia and Juliet vanish from the scene, and Lady Macbeth, with her fierce reliance on intellectual power alone, and indignant scorn of all human judgment, appears. She wrote to the Whalleys:— “MY DEAREST FRIENDS,