“A strange capricious master is the public. However, one consolation greater than any other, except one’s own approbation, has been that those whose suffrages I esteemed most have, through all my troubles, clasped me closer to their hearts; they have been the touchstone to prove who were really my friends. You will believe me when I affirm that your friendship, and my dear Mrs. Whalley’s, is an honour and a happiness I would not forego for any earthly consideration. Tell my dearest Mrs. Whalley that neither avocations nor indolence would have prevented your hearing from me long ago but for the reasons already mentioned. I wrote to you last Sunday, when I had not received your dear letters; so you will do me the justice to remember that I was not reminded of you but by my own heart, which, while it beats, will ever love you both with the warmest and truest affection; however, as she is so seldom mistaken, we shall have the honour and glory of laughing at her. Would to God I could laugh with, or cry with, or anything with you, but for half an hour! To say the truth, though, your tender reproaches gave me a melancholy which I could not (and I don’t know if I wished it) shake off. Pray let me hear from you very soon, and very often. I shall be a better woman, and more worthy of your invaluable friendship, the more I converse with you. Surely the converse of good and gentle spirits is the nearest approach to Heaven that we can know; therefore, once more I beg that I may often hear from you, and, if you do love me, do not think so unworthily of me as to suppose my affection can, in the nature of things, ever know the least abatement. I conjure you both to promise me this, for I cannot bear it—indeed, I can’t!” CHAPTER VIII. LADY MACBETH. Contemporaneous critics are unanimous in declaring Lady Macbeth to be Mrs. Siddons’s finest impersonation, and it is with this _rôle_ that we always connect the Great Actress. She made the part her own, and identified herself with it in the memories of all who saw her. It is essentially in Lady Macbeth that Shakespeare proves himself so thoroughly Anglo-Saxon; the whole conception of the person is Teutonic. The idea of the remorse-haunted murderess, with her despairing fatalism and unswerving ambition, is more nearly allied to “Vala,” in the Scandinavian mythology, than anything in the tragedies of Sophocles or Euripides, and this it is that rendered Mrs. Siddons so perfect an embodiment of the character. She was essentially Teutonic in her grandeur, her stateliness, and, at the same time, sustained energy and vitality. Rachel had moments of superhuman grandeur and ferocity, but they only flashed for a moment; hers was the turning-point of passion of the Latin race, but not the voluminous grandeur, gaining strength, like a mighty river, as it rolls along, which distinguishes the heroic emotions of the Teuton.