sune be risin' to fill their creels. Mr Buller, was you ever in our Embro Fish-Market? No. Where is it, sir? BULLER. SHEPHERD. In the Parliament Hoose. BULLER. In the Parliament House? SHEPHERD. Are you daft? Aneath the North Brigg. BULLER. You said just now it was in the Parliament House. SHEPHERD. Either you or me has been dreamin'. But, Mr North, I'm desperate hungry-are ye no intendin' to gi'e us ony breakfast? Lo and behold! NORTH (ringing the silver bell.) [Enter Peter, Ambrose, King Pepin, Sir David Gam, and Tappietourie, with trays.] SHEPHERD. Rows het frae the oven! Wheat scones! Barley scones! Wat and dry tost! Cookies! Baps! Muffins! Loaves and fishes! Rizzars! Finnans! Kipper! Speldrins! Herring! Marmlet! Jeely! Jam! Ham! Lamb! Tongue! Beef hung! Chickens! Fry! Pigeon pie! Crust and broon aside the Roon'-but sit ye doon-no-freens, let's staun-had up your haun -bless your face-North, gie's a grace-(North says grace.) Noo let's fa' too-but hooly-hooly-hooly-what vision this! What vision this! An Apparition or a Christian Leddy! I ken, I ken her by her curtshy-did that face no tell her name and her nature.-O deign, Mem, to sit doon aside the Shepherd.-Pardon me-tak the head o' the table, ma honour'd Mem-and let the Shepherd sit doon aside you-and may I mak sae bauld as to introduce Mr Buller to you, Mem? Mr Buller, clear your een-for on the Leads o' the Lodge, in face o' heaven, and the risin' sun, I noo introduce you till MRS GENTLE. Ha! She's gane! NORTH (starting and looking wildly round). Too bad, James. SHEPHERD. NORTH (recovering some of his composure). A cretur o' the element! Like a' the ither loveliest sichts that veesit the een o' us mortals-but the dream o' a dream! But, thank heaven, a's no unsubstantial in this warld o' shadows. Were ony o' us to say sae, this breakfast wou'd gie him the lee! Noo, Gurney, mind hoo ye exten' your "O Gurney! shall I call thee bird, or but a wandering voice!" Printed by Ballantyne and Company, Paul's Work, Edinburgh. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD, 45, GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH; AND T. CADELL, STRAND, LONDON. To whom Communications (post paid) may be addressed. SOLD ALSO BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND CO. EDINBURGH. MRS SIDDONS was the daughter of Roger Kemble, the manager of a theatrical company that performed chiefly in the midland and the western towns of England, and of Sarah Ward, whose father was also a strolling manager. "I remember," says Mr Campbell," having seen the parents of the great actress in their old age. They were both of them tall and comely personages. The mother had a somewhat austere stateliness of manner, but it seems to have been from her that the family inherited their genius and force of character. Her voice had much of the emphasis of her daughter's; and her portrait, which long graced Mrs Siddons's drawingroom, had an intellectual expression of the strongest power; she gave you the idea of a Roman matron. The father had all the suavity of the old school of gentlemen. Persons who cannot for a moment disjoin the idea of human dignity from that of station, will perhaps be surprised that I should speak of the dignified manners of a pair who lived by the humble vocation which I have mentioned. It is nevertheless true, that the presence and demeanour of this couple might have graced a court; and though their relationship to Mrs Siddons and John Kemble of course enhan ced the interest which their venerable appearance commanded, yet I have been assured by those who knew them long before their children became illustrious, that in their humblest circumstances they always sustained an entire respectability. There are some individuals whom no circumstances can render vulgar, and Mr and Mrs Kemble were of this description. Besides, in spite of all our prejudices against the players? vocation, irreproachable personal character will always find its level in the general esteem." Mr Roger Kemble being, like his ancestors, a Catholic, whilst his wife was a Protestant, it was arranged that their sons should be bred in the Catholic faith, and the daughters in that of their mother. They had twelve children, of whom four died young; but three sons and five daughters arrived at adult yearsand they almost all chose the profession of their parents, though Mr Campbell says, "I have no doubt that Mr and Mrs Roger Kemble were anxious to prevent their children from becoming actors, and that they sought out other means of providing for them; but they made this attempt too late, that is, after their offspring had been accustomed to theatrical joyousness. For parents * Life of Mrs Siddons, by Thomas Campbell. Effingham Wilson. London: 1834. VOL. XXXVI. NO. CCXXV. L who are players themselves, it is hardly possible to keep their children from following the same life. The conversations-the readingsthe books of the family-the learning of the parts the rehearsals at home -the gaiety diffused by the getting up of comic characters before they are acted-and the imposing dignity of tragic characters-the companyevery thing, indeed, which the children of play-acting parents hear and see, has a tendency to make them more prone to the stage than to any other such plodding and drudging occupations as the most of them would be otherwise destined to pursue." ment Sarah disagreed with her father-for she alleged " that her husband was an unparalleled Falstaff." Sarah Kemble shewed herself for the first time on the stage when a mere child-and was about to retire in a fright, on account of the uproar among a fastidious barn-audience offended at her infantile appearance when her mother led her to the front of the stage, and made her repeat the fable of the " Boys and the Frogs," which not only appeased the pit, but produced thunders of applause, so that she was a successful débutante. At thirteen she was the heroine in several English operas, and sang tolerably-at that period occasionally warbling between the acts. She used then, too, to be Ariel in the Tempest-and must have been a beautiful creature of the element. When she was about seventeen, Mr Siddons, an actor in her father's company, wooed and won her, much to the dissatisfaction of her father, who played over again the part of old Ward. The lover had been bred to business in Birbingham, but being handsome and active, and not without versatile talents for the stage, as his range of characters extended from Hamlet to Harlequin, he had gained provincial popularity before Sarah Kemble's heart. The people of Brecon, suspecting that her parents were not giving the lovers fair play, took a warm interest in their attachment-and Mr Siddons, being jealous of a certain opulent squire named Evans, causeless Sarah was born at Brecon, July 5th, 1755, in a public-house called the Shoulder of Mutton-and a friend of Mr Campbell has given us a drawing and description of it, as he remembers seeing it stand of old, with its gable front, projecting upper floors, and a rich well-fed shoulder of mutton temptingly painted over the door. The Shoulder of Mutton being situated in the centre of Brecon, was much resorted to by the neighbouring inhabitants of the borough; and Mr Kemble, we are told, was neither an unwilling nor an unwelcome member of their jolly associations. He was, says Mr Campbell's correspondent, "a man of respectable family, and of some small hereditary property in Herefordshire, and having married the daughter of a provincial manager, he received a company of strolling players for her dowry, and set up as a manager himself." It is not usually as it appeared, for his supposed to lie-in at public-houses, and from the somewhat ambiguous language here employed, one might think that Mr Roger Kemble had been the landlord of the Shoulder of Mutton. Yet that could hardly be the case, as he was an actor before his marriage, and married Miss Ward against her father's will. Manager Ward disapproved of his daughter marrying an actor, and when he found that her union with Kemble was inevitable, he was with difficulty persuaded to speak to her. He then forgave her, with all the bitterness of his heart, crying, Sarah, you have not disobeyed me; I told you never to marry an actor, and you have married a man who nefther is nor ever can be an actor." Even in this judg 66 rival "died an insolvent bachelor," made an appeal to the people of Brecon on the hardship of his case, at his benefit, which was a bumper. He had, in consequence of some "impetuous language" to Mr Kemble, received his dismissal from the company-but having been injudiciously allowed a parting benefit, at the conclusion of the entertainments, in which we are not told whether he performed Hamlet or Harlequin probably both-he sung a song of his own composition, describing the pangs of his own attachment, the coldness of Miss Kemble, and the perfidy of her parents-in strains which, Mr Campbell observes, no remarkable credit either to his delicacy or poetical genius." "do |