and her eye to burn with a fire beyond human. Wolsey obeys the summons, and requests to know her pleasure: she proceeds to make her charge and her refusal. And we cannot refrain from quoting the following passages, for the purpose of remarking that the mingled feelings of which they are composed, their natural gradations, their quick and violent transitions, are all unfolded and expressed with such matchless perfection of ease and truth, and in colours so far exceeding in force and brilliancy those of every other performer, that the learned and unlearned, the vulgar and the refined, feel alike the instantaneous conviction of their superiority, and the impossibility of adapting praise expressive of their own conceptions, and adequate to her deserts.

I am

about to weep: but thinking that

We are a queen, or long have dream'd so,-certain

The daughter of a king,-my drops of tears

I'll turn to sparks of fire!'

"There were none who did not feel the agonies of sympathy when they saw her efforts to suppress the grief to which her woman's nature was yielding,-who did not acknowledge, in her manner, the truth of her assertion of royalty, and who did not experience a portion of that awe which Wolsey might be supposed to feel when her sparks of fire' darted through her drops of tears.'

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6

Every line of the subsequent reply to Wolsey, who entreats her to be patient,' exhibited the perfection of appropriate expression:

'I will, when you are humble,-nay, before;
Or God will punish me. I do believe,
Induced by potent circumstances, that
You are mine enemy; and make my challenge
You shall not be my judge: for it is you

Have blown this coal betwixt my lord and me,

Which heaven's dew quench! Therefore, I say again,

I utterly abhor,-yea, from my soul,

Refuse you for my judge! whom, yet once more,

I hold my most malicious foe, and think not

At all a friend to truth!'

"The withering poignancy of her scorn, and the deep solemnity of her reproach, made awful by the agitations of her

soul, render vain our attempts either of description or of eulogy. "When the wiles of the arrogant politician overpower the simple honesty of her feelings, and 'vex her past her patience;" and when she quits the court, saying

'I will not tarry !-no, nor ever more

Upon this business my appearance make

In any of their courts!'

every spectator starts into sympathy with Henry's blunt exclamation, at her departure,

"We are now brought to what we do not hesitate to believe the most entirely faultless specimen of the art that any age ever witnessed: we mean the last scene of Katharine's sickness and approaching death. We are, in general, subjected to severe disappointment by the attempts of art to imbody the portraitures of ideal excellence which imagination has previously raised: but, in this instance, its most soaring conceptions are equalled, we will venture to say surpassed, by the extraordinary powers of Mrs. Siddons. Her empire over the regions of tragedy is unlimited;-her potency of terror and of wo are equal and the tremendous pencil of Michael Angelo, which we have seen her wield with such force, in Lady Macbeth, Constance, and others, is here resigned for the sublime and pathetic simplicity of Raphael's touches,-so saintedly beauteous is the sickness and the grief of Katharine.

"There is one feature of her delineation of the sickness unto death, which struck us as a remarkable indication of the superiority of her observations of nature, and her skill in the representation. Instead of that motionless languor and monotonous imbecility of action and countenance, with which the commonplace stage-pictures of sickness are given, Mrs. Siddons, with a curious perception of truth and nature peculiarly her own, displayed, through her feeble and falling frame, and death-stricken expression of features, that morbid fretfulness of look, that restless desire of changing place and position, which frequently attends our last decay. With impatient solicitude, she sought relief from the irritability of illness by the often shifting her situation in her chair; having the pillows on which she reposed her head every now and then removed and adjusted; bending forward, and sustaining herself, while speaking, by the pressure of her hands upon her knees; and playing,

during discourse, among her drapery, with restless and uneasy fingers and all this with such delicacy and such effect combined, as gave a most beautiful as well as most affecting portraiture of nature fast approaching to its exit.

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"To select passages from this scene for particular admiration would be idle, where the whole so strongly calls for the revived attention of the mind, to examine and reflect upon the minute and watchful skill by which every part was made to conduce to that wondrous general impression received while witnessing the performance. Yet, perhaps, those little touches which mark and preserve individuality of character start off in the strongest light of remembrance; such as the indignant reproof with which she chides the rude and irreverent entrance of the messenger, and shows that, in her dejected state, 'she will not lose her wonted greatness;' and the peculiar moral sweetness and royalty of manner with which she makes her last request:

'When I am dead,

Let me be us'd with honour. Strew me over

With maiden flowers, that all the world may know

I was a chaste wife unto my grave!

Although unqueen'd, inter me like a queen;

And pay respect to that which I have been.'

"One additional beauty of her performance remains for us to notice, the astonishing nicety with which her powers are made gradually to decay from the beginning to the end of the scene; when her anxious directions to the Lord Campeius seem to have exhausted her; when her eyes grow dim,' and her bodily and mental powers but just suffice, as she is supported off, to lay upon her servants the last pathetic and solemn injunctions we have quoted.

"The oppressive truth of her representation, in this scene, is remarkably indicated by the minds of the audience being always so weighed down with the load of sorrow, tenderness, and respect, that it is not until she is no more seen, and reflection has relieved them from their sensations, that they ever once think of paying the customary tribute of applause, which then cannot be too long and loud: but, in the course of the scene, the heart cannot once yield to, or suffer the usual theatrical sympathy of the hands."

On the 7th of February following, she played, for the first time, Volumnia,* in Shakspeare's "Coriolanus," adapted to

* Coriolanus, Kemble; Tullus Aufidius, Wroughton; Menenius, Baddely; Comminius, J. Aickin; Tribunes, Barrymore and Whitfield; Citizens, Suett, &c.; Virgilia, Mrs. Farmer; Valeria, Mrs. Ward.

during discourse, among her drapery, with restless and uneasy fingers: and all this with such delicacy and such effect com bined, as gave a most beautiful as well as most affecting portraiture of nature fast approaching to its exit.

"To select passages from this scene for particular admira tion would be idle, where the whole so strongly calls for the revived attention of the mind, to examine and reflect upon the minute and watchful skill by which every part was made w conduce to that wondrous general impression received while witnessing the performance. Yet, periape, thorn ble han which mark and preserve individualny of char**** **** ** the strongest signs of remen', www reproof with when she ate te

of the messenger, and wowed,

last request: