Mr. Irving, recalling his earliest associations with Booth in Manchester, in 1861, has told me that the young actor seemed to him at that time to be the most magnificent specimen of intellectual manhood he had ever seen. And George William Curtis, writing in 1864, said: “Booth is altogether princely. His costume is still the solemn suit of sables, varied according to his fancy of greater fitness; and his small, lithe form, with the mobility and intellectual sadness of his face, and his large, melancholy eyes, satisfy the most fastidious imagination that this is Hamlet as he lived in Shakspere’s time.” Mrs. M. E. W. Sherwood, speaking of him when he was in his perfect prime, in the part of Othello alludes to “that dark face to which the Eastern robe was so becoming, seeming at once to be telling its mighty story of adventure and conquest. It was a proud and beautiful face. Desdemona was not worthy of it.” Booth’s face was to me one of the most beautiful and most lovable that I ever looked upon. The only feminine heads in the collection graced once the shoulders of a trio of queens, a Queen of Tragedy, a Queen of Prussia, and a Queen of Song. The mask of Mrs. Siddons is in the possession of Mr. Percy Fitzgerald. It is generally accepted as having been taken from the actual face of the great actress, but its pedigree or its history Mr. Fitzgerald does not know. A bust of Mrs. Siddons by J. Smith, 57 Upper Norton Street, Marylebone, was exhibited in the Model Room of the Royal Academy in 1813, the year before she retired from the stage. Mr. Edward W. Hennell has an autograph letter of Mrs. Siddons, undated and addressed simply “Sir,” but written, evidently, to this artist and referring to this bust. In it she says, “The time is drawing near which will bring my labors to an end, and I shall then hope to be able to indulge myself in many gratifications of which they have hitherto deprived me, and among which that of visiting your study will stand very forward.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: EDWIN BOOTH] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ It is not improbable that Smith made a cast of Mrs. Siddons’s face, a common occurrence in those days, although unfortunately no such occurrence is recorded by Mrs. Siddons herself, or by any of her biographers.