Her dress in the first and second acts was a heavy black robe, with a broad border, which ran from her shoulders down to her feet, of the most vivid crimson, over which fell a long white veil. In the third she changed this costume for another black dress, with great gold bands lacing it across, and gold ornaments round her neck and in her hair. Both of these dresses strike us as being “stagey,” but she never had the art of dressing herself; so great, however, was her power, that all minor accessories of dress and scenery were forgotten. For the sleep-walking scene Sir Joshua had designed clouds of white drapery swathing the pale drawn face; they lent an appalling weirdness to her appearance, whilst the glassy stare she managed to throw into her eyes completed the horror. The audience were spellbound; they only saw that woe-worn face, and heard that voice, broken with agony and remorse. It was a night of nights, for her and them, and yet no applause, no success, turned her from concentration on the purpose and issue of her art. “While standing up before my glass,” she tells us, “and taking off my mantle, a diverting circumstance occurred to chase away the feelings of the anxious night, for, _while I was repeating, and endeavouring to call to mind the appropriate tone and action to the following words_, ‘Here’s the smell of blood still,’ my dresser innocently exclaimed, ‘Dear me, Ma’am, how very hysterical you are to-night! I protest and vow, Ma’am, it was not blood, but rose-pink and water; for I saw the property-man mix it up with my own eyes.’” These were, indeed, the palmy days of the English stage. With a self-collected, courageous energy, artists then saw and recognised the greatest, and strained every nerve to attain it. Scenic effect was of minor importance; the development of mental action, the portrayal of passion, were the end and aim of the actor’s art, to which everything else was subsidiary. They spent years upon the evolving of one heroic conception, not with regard to its details of upholstery and scene-painting, but with regard to the presentment of the poet’s imagination which they undertook to represent. CHAPTER IX. FRIENDS. Needless to say that in those days, when genius was worshipped and the entrance to the most exclusive circles of society accorded to talent of every description, the social homage paid to Mrs. Siddons was of the most enthusiastic description, passing sometimes the bounds of good taste. The door of the lodgings she occupied in the Strand the first year she acted was soon beset by various persons quite unknown to her, some of whom actually forced their way into her drawing-room, in spite of remonstrance or opposition.