We shall not add to what we have already said of her Queen Katherine, or Lady Macbeth, except one circumstance, illustrative of the above position. Mrs. Siddons, who repeatedly read ‘Macbeth’ before the most competent judges, made a deeper and more lasting impression, not only in her own part, but in the other characters, than did the representation on the stage by her brother and herself, with all the advantages of dress and the illusion of scenery. The audience, at her readings, consisting of men and women of taste and literature, professed never to have understood Shakspeare so thoroughly before. Her Isabella, in ‘Measure for Measure,’ claims a short notice. This play in Garrick’s reign was acted occasionally to empty benches in the dull part of the season; but neither the manager himself, nor his leading performers, condescended to appear in so grave and sermonizing a piece. Even when played by Kemble and his sister, it did not draw crowded houses; but it ensured a critical and enlightened audience. The theatre seldom contained so many men of the first reputation for taste and literature as when that play was performed. John Kemble’s mind was framed in the same mould with his sister’s; he gave to a sententious and philosophic part dignity and interest, where an ordinary actor would preach his audience to sleep. The scene between the Duke in the disguise of a Confessor, and Isabella, excited neither tears nor rapturous applause, but intense interest, and breathless attention. The Duke’s exposition of his project is long, her intervening speeches short, and not emphatic; so that such a scene bids fair to be called _prosing_. But the intense and intelligent expression in her eyes, and more perhaps in her mouth, the great seat of expression, filled up whatever was wanting: the gradually increasing, but as yet far from complete comprehension of the device, and of its consistency with her own purity, marked without words what was passing in her mind: but when she exclaims “The image of it gives me content already, and I trust it will grow to a most prosperous perfection,” the burst of perfect understanding, the lighting up of every feature, and the tones of sudden joy, produced a corresponding effect in the spectators, which scenes of intense pathos could scarcely surpass in effect. Mrs. Siddons’s power over the mind was as great as over the passions.