both the brother and sister; sundry inconveniences attended the arrival of Mrs. Siddons; the press was not carried by storm, and dared to quiz the great actress, and burlesque the popular enthusiasm; the public, though delighted with her, were not to be turned against Mrs. Crawford, an old favorite, and an actress of extraordinary merit, who had been taught by Garrick. Mrs. Siddons' character, cautious, money-loving, narrow, was antipathetic to the Irish people, with all their appreciation of her genius. She had no comprehension of their humor, and no sympathy with them, and they never liked her. Nothing ever shook their belief in her meanness; and, indeed, the rebutting case attempted by Mr. Fitzgerald breaks down notably. Caricatures, illustrative of this detestable quality, were lavishly produced in Dublin, which might have been withheld had it been as clearly understood then as we see it now, that Mrs. Siddons was an overworked woman, incessantly urged to exertion by a rapacious and selfish husband. The London season of seven months brought her in two thousand pounds. During the rest of the year she was rushing about the provinces, seeking eagerly for engagements at country theatres. This system, which had never before been adopted by any artist of rank, she pursued for years, and she was in consequence very unpopular with the profession, whose meagre pastures she thus swept wholesale. Her avidity for money was rendered more displeasing by her want of dignity on the subject. She incessantly and bitterly complained of the exhaustion consequent on these excursions; and she was always putting forth her children as excuses, so that it actually became a jest with the newspapers as to those three children and a husband" whom Mrs. Siddons was obliged to support. The more she made the more grasping she became; and in her first negotiation with Jackson, the Edinburgh manager, she exhibited "smartness" which was not forgotten in her, though she won the plaudits of a Scotch audience, then supposed to be thoroughly unimpressible by dramatic ability. On her second visit to Ireland, her personal unpopularity got the better of her dramatic fame, and she had a great deal to suffer and live down.

a

On 2d February, 1784, Mrs. Siddons

made her first appearance as Lady Macbeth, a character which she had studied, as her notes show, on the truest principles, weighing, comparing, experimenting, until she had worked out a grand, consistent, and truly effective theory of it. As she said herself, one could give the feelings of a wife or mother from personal experience, but with this wonderful character there were no precedents to follow-it must be an effort of the judgment. Her success was marvellous; the play was a splendid triumph, and Mrs. Siddons' departure from the "business," as laid down by Mrs. Pritchard, was hailed with enthusiastic approbation. Her next great achievement was playing Desdemona to John Philip Kemble's Othello, with a softness and winning grace that actually drew the affections of her audience to her. She was, however, said Mr. Boaden, "too heroic in her person to give the character with all effect." Desdemona's stage bed was damp, and Mrs. Siddons got rheumatic fever. When she recovered, she tried comedy, playing Rosalind and Mrs. Lovemore, and if not quite failing in both, not quite succeeding in either. Imogen, Cordelia, and Ophelia were characters unsuited to her.

In July, 1785, after a laborious provincial tour, she was playing at Edinburgh, where her success was again amazing. A terrible scene occurred during her performance of Isabella. When the actress uttered her piteous cry: "O my Biron !" Miss Gordon of Gight made the house resound with her fearful shrieks, repeating the words: "O my Biron!" and was carried out still screaming. This lady became the mother of Lord Byron, who at one time affected to spell his name "Biron." Lady Grey of Gask told Mr. Robert Chambers that she could never forget that cry of Mrs. Siddons: "O my Biron !" In 1788, Kemble became manager of Drury Lane, and Mrs. Siddons' fame, fortune, and popularity were at their height. Her Queen Katherine and Volumnia belong to this era.

The great actress, whose heart was always full of the home from which she was so constantly wandering, and the children whom she had so frequently to leave, began to suffer from ennui and heart-sickness in the midst of the triumphs which never satisfied her, except by their pecuniary results. But severe loss, through the

gible glamor. There is no straining after novelty; he never loses his simple, dignified identity in the mask of caricatured sensation, as travel-writers are too wont. The charm of this book is very simple: it consists only in the fact that, professing to be Hawthorne, it is Hawthorne, and neither an infusion of other minds dipped out with his own pen upon the page, nor a spicy decoction from the clear fluid of his real, simple impressions.

The notes of his experience while dwelling in Rome and Florence deserve admiration for more than this trueness to himself—the clear insight which they display in various subjects, the calm and trenchant precision with which his speculations go to the root of fifty different matters. There is in general throughout the book a more diversified mental activity and a greater play of fancy than in the English Note-Books. This fact is in consonance with the different character of the work inspired by Italian influence and that which was the product of English soil. "Our Old Home" is a collection of articles dealing chiefly with local English topics, and treated with solid reality in the author's most genial mood; while "The Marble Faun," better known in England as "Transformation," is a profound speculation in human nature, under the garb of a most picturesque and imaginative romance. There is, perhaps, no more delicate comment on the exquisite sensibility of Hawthorne than this, that he should be so open to climatic influence in his writing. The quality of his genius may be compared to that of a violin, which owes its fine properties to the seasoning of tempered atmospheres, and transmits a thrill of sunshine through the vibrations of its resonant wood: his utterances are modulated by the very changes of the air. It is a pleasure to mark the responses of this finely-poised mind to each and every impression. The alternate insight and self-criticism with which he views the famous art in Italian galleries show how loyal he was with himself to the truth. He never goes against his grain to admire the prescribed, nor will he assume that his own judgment is correct. The questionings with which he qualifies each opinion advanced show us the smelting process by which he extracted truth by grains from the uncertain ore of thought. He turns a statement over and over,

handles it in all moods, before he can consent to take a solid grasp, and incorporate it as belief. The flow of his thought includes both poles, as where he says: "Classic statues escape you, with their slippery beauty, as if they were made of ice. Rough and ugly things can be clutched. This is nonsense, and yet it means something." One must admire the frankness with which he disapproves superannuated pictorial art. Blotted and scaling frescoes hurt his mind, he says, in the same manner that dry-rot in a wall will impart disease to the human frame. In Rome he recoils as if wounded from certain dingy picture-frames and unvarnished pictures. On this point we must quote, to be fair, from the editor's note in explanation. She says:-"Mr. Hawthorne's inexorable demand for perfection in all things leads him to complain of grimy pictures, and tarnished frames, and faded frescoes, distressing beyond measure to eyes that never failed to see everything before them with the keenest apprehension. The usual careless observation o. people, both of the good and the imperfect, is much more comfortable in this imperfect world. But the insight which Mr. Hawthorne possessed was only equalled by his outsight, and he suffered in a way not to be readily conceived from any failure in beauty-physical, moral, or intellectual. It may give an idea of this exquisite nicety of feeling to mention that one day he took in his fingers a halfbloomed rose, without blemish, and smiling with an infinite joy, remarked, 'This is perfect. On earth only a flower is per fect.""

The present volumes do not afford so many of those quaint suggestions for tale or romance which made a chief charm of the American Note-Books. In accounting for this, something may be allowed to the advancing age of the writer, and something to the rapid change of scene during travel, and the multitude of fleeting impressions showered upon the mind in sightseeing. But from other sources it may be proved that the number of ideas intended to subtend future fiction was at this period in fact multiplied. Their absence from the journals must be ascribed to the natural increase of a tendency on the part of the author to expend all the labor in his journals upon materialities, actualities— upon the description of multiform nature,

human and physical, and art, rather than upon imperfect hints at the dreams yet to be embodied. There is, we may conjecture, a more decided consciousness that the idea of a poet must develop itself in poem or tale much as the soul develops itself in a human body, and that for this reason he will do well to concern himself chiefly with producing the work's grosser substance, sure that the essence will imbue it, as certainly as the soul a new body.

No one falls more completely under the head of ideal writers than Hawthorne.

At

the same time, no one has more devotedly subjected himself to the study of Nature in her every manifestation. What can surpass the delicate and wise humor of his study of pigs at Brook Farm, or the delicious reality of the ancient hens in the Pyncheon Garden? Hawthorne, in short, is a complete type of the artist, learning Nature accurately, rooting his whole mental system in the solid foundation of the broad earth and its everyday life, yet projecting in his works an ideal truth that branches into airiest space. GEORGE P. LATHROP.

"SHE was

an unlucky ship." This is said of H.M.S. Megara, the loss of which vessel has been occupying public attention for some months of late. There is no denying she was an unpopular ship, and had earned for herself a reputation for discomfort. She had been a troopship; and officers and soldiers who had sailed in her had generally grumbled over the accommodation. This time she was not exactly acting as a troop-ship; she had passengers on board, but they were all blue-jackets-relief crews for the Blanche and Rosario, two ships to be recommissioned in Australia, instead of coming home. Captain Thrupp was appointed to the command, and on out-arrival at Sydney he was to exchange with Captain Montgomerie, of the Blanche. The Megara had also a quantity of stores on board, for Ascension, the Cape of Good Hope, and Sydney. There had been much grumbling before she started, and still more when she was obliged to put into Queenstown, three days after leaving Plymouth, to refit. She had encountered stormy weather, and it had made her deficiencies more evident. It was said she was overloaded, overcrowded, and leaky. The men were discontented, and no wonder, for the main-deck, where they lived and slept, was ten inches deep in water, and their kits were wet through and spoilt. Thirty boys, sent on board in hurry at Plymouth, had not even hooks to sling up their hammocks. Seasick, soaked and miserable, they were not likely to forget their first voyage at sea. The officers were not satisfied, for thirty

three had to be contented with the accommodation for twenty-two; their cabins were flooded with water, and, for want of store-room, their mess-traps were broken and their stores soaked. This was a bad beginning; however, the captain, of course, reported defects, newspapers published complaints, and questions were asked in Parliament. In consequence, the PortAdmiral inspected the "unlucky ship," and many of the evils were remedied. A hundred tons of the cargo were landed, the troop-deck cleared for the berths of the men, and new cabins built for the officers. The leaky ports were repaired, and the removal of part of the stores having lightened her, she was not so likely to ship water. On the 14th of March-the Admiral having pronounced her ready for sea-the Megara sailed from Queenstown. We had light, fair winds nearly all the way across the Bay of Biscay, and the ship behaved much better, was easier in a seaway, and steered better. We arrived at Madeira on the 21st, just as the equinoctial gales were beginning. We were all much more comfortable on board, and determined to make the best of everything and enjoy ourselves. One evening we had great amusement harpooning porpoises; they all, however, escaped before we could haul them in, the ship was going so fast through the water. We had a drum-and-fife band on board, which played very well, and a couple of fiddlers, and also an harmonium, which we used in the service on Sunday. Some of the men had very fair voices, and were not unused to a choir, so the chants and hymns were

well executed. A stiff gale was blowing all the while we were in harbor at Madeira, and we stayed there a day or two longer in consequence. One evening we had a grand performance on board. First, some conjuring from the Great Wizard of the South-a sergeant of marines-who performed very cleverly, doing the bottletrick, burning handkerchiefs and restoring them, firing watches from pistols, etc. etc. After that, we had singing, clog-dancing, fencing, and orchestral music. The very day we sailed from Madeira the equinoctial gales ceased blowing. At St. Vincent we stopped a day and a half to coal; we took in a new passenger—a good-tempered monkey, who came on board; the owner followed, but could not catch him, so he went on with us to Ascension, where we landed him. By this time, we had all settled down sociably together, croaking had ceased, and, as the captain encouraged employments and amusements among the men, many entertainments took place, which promoted contentment and good feeling. Besides the conjurer and the drum-and-fife band, there was a troop of Christy Minstrels, and we found some respectable performers on the flute, accordion, and cornet, among the crew. The officers got up entertainments for the men, after the fashion of the Penny Readings, so popular now on shore for winter evenings. On the first occasion the captain made a speech, praising the men for the efforts they had made to amuse their shipmates and enliven the monotony of the long voyage, and saying, that as all deserved encouragement who exerted themselves to promote the happiness of others, the officers would now endeavor to do their best, following the example set them by the men. Tremendous applause followed, and we certainly had most attentive audiences for our entertainments, which were given on Thursdays when the weather permitted. We had pretty fair weather on the whole, occasionally very cold, but the wind was against us, and we made but slow progress. Our best run was on the 13th of May, when we made 211 miles in twenty-four hours. This gale found out the weak points in the rigging, and many ropes were carried away. We arrived at the Cape, notwithstanding, all safe, and there refitted, coaled, and landed some of the stores; and had a very pleasant time while completing

these operations, some of the officers making excursions on shore, playing cricket-matches, or shooting. We left the Cape on the 28th of May. "Sunday sail, never fail," as the sailors say,—but good luck did not attend it this time. The old Megara went away at a good pace, with a fair wind; we were all in good spirits, hoping to reach Australia in thirty-five days, quick enough to carry them news from England.

It was on June 8th that our troubles began. It was a dark night, a heavy sea was running, and we were going nine knots, when the butcher fell overboard. One man thought he heard a splash, another had seen a marine go forward; but it was not ascertained that any one was missing for ten minutes or so, when we had gone over a mile from the spot. The wind was against us, no life-buoy had been let go; so it would have been mere mockery to heave to, and lower a boat, risking twelve men's lives to save one, who must probably have already perished: Nothing could be done; but the incident cast a gloom over our spirits. In the middle of the night the captain was aroused to be told the ship had sprung a leak, and that there were seventeen inches of water in the hold. The donkey-pump was at once manned, and for a time we gained on the leak. Great was the consternation that spread through the ship, when all heard the intelligence next morning. Rumor exaggerated the calamity, and it was said there were three feet of water in the hold, and the ship beginning to sink. We were 1,600 miles from any land, about midway between the Cape and St. Paul's, a small rocky island in the Indian Ocean; but the wind was foul for returning, so it seemed best to press on with all speed. Each day the leak increased. were manned, without being able to keep the water under; then a party was employed baling, hoisting up the water in iron buckets all day long to the sound of fife and fiddle: sixty buckets an hour. The engineers were crawling all about the ship's bottom, under water half the time, in search of the leak. The horrid wash of the water from side to side, as the hip rolled, was enough to make your fish creep, and still the water gained on us. So we got up steam and used the bilgepumps; these were more effectual, but

More pumps