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have done all this, and are complete masters of that patient land, pass away either by absorption or decay, leaving the older race almost unchanged. Egypt has forever, so far as history can reach, been the property of foreigners. The oldest Egyptians of Meza's day were plainly no Africans, but an immigrated Asiatic people, as their type and language betray. Ever since, the great rulers of the land have been invaders, or mules in descent. The occupation of the Macedonians has many points of

likeness with that of the English. The Macedonians reformed the administration, improved the irrigation, strengthened the military defences, and occupied the frontiers with their superior army. Yet they respected native law and native traditions, and made no serious attempt to denationalize the administration. If the English control could only be as successful as that of the Macedonians, our interference would require no further justification.-New Review.

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ELIZABETH INCHBALD.

GODWIN, condescending for once to epigram, described Mrs. Inchbald as a piquante mixture between a lady and a milkmaid." Sheridan declared that she was the only authoress whose society pleased him; and the passing glimpses we obtain of her in the memoirs and letters of contemporaries excite the wish that they were fuller and more frequent.

Few things in the annals of biography are more to be regretted than the evil fate which, making a never-to-be-forgiven Dr. Poynter its instrument, robbed the reading world of Mrs. Inchbald's Memoirs written by Herself," and substituted the materials collected for those memoirs, manipulated afresh by the prosy and pompous James Boaden.

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The publishers of that day knew that Mrs. Inchbald was compiling her recollections, and competed eagerly for them, offering a thousand pounds without seeing the manuscript, and in one case even proposing to settle an annuity on her. But she demurred and held back; and only a memorandum found among her papers rather mysteriously indicates the fate of the precious work. "Query-What I should wish done at the point of death.

Dr. P.-Do it now.
Four volumes destroyed."

The bright anecdotes and sketches of famous contemporaries that must have flowed from the pen of the author of "The Simple Story," when relating her own checkered career, are lost beyond recall. But it is still possible to disen

tangle the facts of her life from the wearisome platitudes and yet more intolerable puns of her historian.

Elizabeth, the fairest of several fair daughters of John Simpson, a Roman Catholic farmer living at Standingfield, near Bury St. Edmunds, was born in 1753, only eight years before her father's death. Her mother, who seems to have been a sensible and energetic woman, brought up her large family well, and long carried on the farm with the assistance of such of her children as remained single.

Four of her daughters married early, and went to live in London, which thenceforward became the promised land to Elizabeth, who, at thirteen, declared that she had rather die than not see the world." In early youth, though her charming manner and gay disposition eminently fitted her to be popular in society, she shrank from it nervously, because of a stammer which in later years was considered only an addition to her many attractions. Yet, oddly enough, her great ambition was to become an actress. With this end in view she persistently endeavored to improve her enunciation, writing the words which she found most difficult, and carrying them about with her, so that she might lose no opportunity of practising them.

Elizabeth's taste for the drama was shared by all her family one of their favorite amusements was to read plays aloud, each taking a part. When the theatre at Bury St. Edmunds was open the Simpsons were regular attendants;

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they made friends among members of the companies performing there, and in 1770 Elizabeth applied to Richard Griffith, manager of the Norwich Theatre, for an engagement. Nothing came of the application then, but a friendly correspondence and an amusing entry in her pocket-book : "R-i-c-h-a-r-d G-r-i-f-f-i-t-h. Each dear letter of thy name is harmony!"

In the same year her brother George exchanged the farm for the stage. His frequent letters, which no doubt dwelt rather on the lights than the shadows of theatrical life, increased Elizabeth's desire to follow the same course.

Visiting Mrs. Hunt, one of her married sisters, in 1771, Elizabeth became acquainted with Mr. Inchbald, an actor of respectability, who promptly fell in love with her, accompanied her on sightseeing expeditions, and after her return wrote to her mother and herself what was evidently an offer of his hand.

Her answer was more candid than encouraging:

"In spite of your eloquent pen," she con

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cludes, matrimony still appears to me with less charms than terrors. to enter into marriage with the least reluctance, as fearing you are going to sacrifice part of your life, must be greatly imprudent. Fewer unhappy marriages, I think, would be occasioned if fewer persons were guilty of this indiscretion -an indiscretion that shocks me, and which I hope Heaven will ever preserve me from; as must be your wish, if the regard that you have professed for me be really mine, of which I am not wholly undeserving; for, as much as the strongest friendship can allow, I am yours.-E. Simpson.

"*

It seems, from some brief but significant entries in her journal, that at this time she was wavering between Mr. Inchbald, who loved her, and Mr. Griffith, whom she fancied she loved :

"January 22d.-Saw Mr. Griffith's picture. 66 28th.-Stole it.

"29th.-Rather disappointed at not receiv. ing a letter from Mr. Inchbald."

In March she records receiving a note from Mr. Griffith, which almost distracted her." Whether its contents were personal or professional does not appear, but undoubtedly it put the finishing touch to her determination to

"Memoirs and Correspondence of Mrs. Inchbald," edited by James Boaden. London Richard Bentley, 1833. Vol. i., page 15.

leave home, and as her family, despite their theatrical predilections, had consistently opposed her desire to become an actress, she ran away to London, leaving on her dressing-table-as became a heroine of romance-a farewell letter to her mother.

Elizabeth was then eighteen years old, and very lovely. Even Boaden waxes eloquent in describing her :

"She was in truth a figure that could not be seen without astonishment at its loveliness tall, slender, straight, of the purest complexion and most beautiful features. Her hair of a golden auburn, her eyes full at once of spirit and sweetness; a combination of delicacy that checked presumption and interest that captivated the faucy.'

Dreading lest she should be sent back to the farm if any of her family knew where she was to be found, Elizabeth did not join her sisters when she arrived in London "in the Norwich fly," but went in search of some friends who had been living at Charing Cross, only to find that they had quitted London for Wales. She appears then, if one may judge from an account of her proceedings which Boaden pronounces founded on fact (on the ground that it was published in her lifetime and not contradicted by her), to have become distraught with nervous excitement, to have run away from houses where she would have been kindly received, to have wandered aimlessly about the neighborhood of Holborn, and finally to have obtained a room at the "White Swan," under the pretext that she had been disappointed of a seat in the York coach. But her hosts must have regarded her with some suspicion, for they locked her into her room at night!

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She remained there, however, living on a roll or two and a draught of water," until her failure to obtain an immediate theatrical engagement, and her rapidly dwindling funds, frightened her into communicating with her sisters. She then received her mother's forgiveness and help, and met Mr. Inchbald again at the house of her brotherin-law, Mr. Slender. Some incidents

"Memoirs and Correspondence of Mrs. Inchbald," Vol. i., p. 25.

The fragments of her diary which escaped destruction contain excellent descriptive touches. She says of her brother-in-law:

during her negotiations with managers, peculiarly revolting to a girl of her high spirit and natural refinement, no doubt sharpened her appreciation of Mr. Inchbald's unwearied devotion. She had evidently begun to realize acutely the difficulty of making her way in London alone and unprotected. Two months after her arrival in town they were married by a Catholic priest and afterward by a Protestant clergyman,* and in the evening the bride accompanied Mrs. Slender to the theatre to see the bridegroom act Mr. Oakley in The Jealous Wife, which the superstitious might regard as ominous of troubles that only too quickly followed.

On the following day they started for Bristol, where Mr. Inchbald had an engagement, and there, in the September of the same year, Mrs. Inchbald made her first appearance on any stage as Cordelia to her husband's Lear. She must have looked the character enchantingly, but did not, it would seem, declaim it equally well, for she relates many painstaking lessons bestowed on her by her husband, both indoors and out, wandering over the hills or sitting by the fireside, with a view to curing the mechanical and monotonous utterance she adopted as a precaution against her stammer. She was industrious, and certainly not fastidious as to the parts in which she appeared, for we read of her as Anne Boleyn, one of the witches in Macbeth, Jane Shore, a Bacchante in Comus, Desdemona, the Tragic Muse in the Jubilee, and a long et cetera.†

The seven years of Mrs. Inchbald's married life were chiefly spent in travelling from theatre to theatre in the United Kingdom, sharing her husband's professional labors-a much more arduous existence a hundred years ago than we can easily realize. On one occasion they took ship from Leith to Aberdeen,

"Mr. Slender was in reality good-natured, but his good-nature consisted in frightening you to death to have the pleasure of recover ing you; in holding an axe over your head for the purpose of pronouncing a reprieve.'

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Yet Boaden declares they were "both Ro. man Catholics, who professed the religion of their fathers."

† She once acted Hamlet, for the benefit of her stepson, George Inchbald, to his Horatio, while Suett doubled Rosencrantz and the Grave-digger!

but encountered such bad weather, that after a night's tossing and terror, the captain put his passengers ashore at a little village, whence the Inchbalds had to depart on foot-literally "strolling players"-thankful for an occasional lift in a coal cart.

At Aberdeen, Mrs. Inchbald must have been a favorite; she performed there in thirty characters, from August to November, 1773. She was then only twenty, and her beauty and grace no doubt compensated for the absence of histrionic genius, to which she appears never to have risen.* Her journal shows that both she and her husband possessed tastes and aspirations beyond the limits of their profession. While she was studying French and busying herself with translations, he was painting her portrait and giving her drawinglessons.

A letter from Digges, manager of the Dumfries Theatre at this period, suggests an occasional conflict between the feelings of the artist and the woman. After asking her to take the part of Zaphira, as he "cannot depend on any other person's attention or punctuality with safety to the welfare of the theatre," he adds :

"I should wish you'd be so good to dress it in a matron-like manner; much depends on that. And if you would suffer your face to be a little marked, as I have seen Mrs. Woffington's in Veturia, it must greatly serve you." No doubt she complied; at all events, Mr. Digges was so pleased with her that in the following month he presented her with a handsome necklace and pair of earrings. Perhaps as consolation for her temporary disfigurement !

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In June, 1776, we are told, while Mrs. Inchbald was playing Jane Shore in the Edinburgh Theatre, as they expected, there was a riot on Mr. Inchbald's account." Why they should have

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expected" a disturbance, or in what way he had incurred the wrath of the canny Scots, is not explained, but the manifestation must have been serious, for the Inchbalds quitted Edinburgh

* One charm she seems to have possessed in common with Mrs. Jordan-a spontaneous, infectious, musical laugh. She says that in playing comedy she could not resist laughing much more often than had been set down for her.

and spent their unpremeditated holiday in a long-desired visit to France.

In Paris, Mrs. Inchbald's grace and intelligence made her popular at once, and the fact that she and her husband were Roman Catholics opened many doors to them. Mr. Inchbald even contemplated establishing himself there as a miniature painter; but he must have quickly changed his mind, for September found them at Brighton, trying for theatrical engagements difficult to obtain after the Edinburgh disaster-and in such pecuniary straits that they often dispensed with dinner or tea, and once went into the fields to make a meal of turnips! But wherever they went, and whatever troubles awaited them, Mrs. Inchbald's sweet face and sunny manner always won her friends. In Scotland, the ladies who led the fashion would not attend the theatres unless she played-and in Brighton the fellow passengers who had crossed from Dieppe with the Inchbalds showed In October they obtained engagements at Liverpool, which proved in every way fortunate, as they then met Mrs. Siddons, and a friendship began between her and Mrs. Inchbald which lasted nearly fifty years. The Queen of Tragedy was at that time only on the steps of the throne, and her new friend's diary describes her as singing merrily over her household work, which then included the family washing.

them much attention.

Fanny Kemble, who, in two pages of her vivid reminiscences, gives a better idea of Mrs. Inchbald than can be gleaned from Boaden's two heavy vol

umes, says :

She was very beautiful, and gifted with original genius, as her plays and novels tes. tify. She was not an actress of any special merit, but of respectable mediocrity. She stuttered habitually, but her delivery was never impeded by this defect on the stage. Mrs. Inchbald was a person of very remark. able character, lovely, poor, with unusual mental powers, and of irreproachable conduct. She had a singular uprightness and unworldliness, and a childlike directness and simplicity of manner, which, combined with her personal loveliness, and halting, broken utterance, gave to her conversation, which was both humorous and witty, a most peculiar and comical charm. Once, after travelling all day in a pouring rain, the dripping coachman offered her his arm to help her out, when she exclaimed, to the great amusement of her felNEW SERIES.-VOL. LIX., No. 1.

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low-travellers, 'Oh no, no! Y y-y-you will give me my death of cold! Do bring me a-a-a a dry man.' Coming off the stage one even. ing, she was about to sit down by Mrs. Siddons in the green room, when suddenly, looking at her magnificent neighbor, she said, 'No, I won't s-s-s-sit by you. You're t-t-t too handsome!' in which respect she certainly need have feared no competition, and less with my aunt than any one, their style of beauty being so absolutely dissimilar."

As a

Through all her varied experiences, and amid almost continuous change of scene, Mrs. Inchbald educated herself with admirable perseverance. child she had copied and studied the parts in which she desired to appear (such as Cordelia and Hermione); and she left behind her many MS. volumes of extracts from and abstracts of the books she most attentively read, such as histories and biographies; making chronological tables for herself, and noting any fact which might serve as a landmark to memory. Among the books she notes as having read and epitomized are Chesterfield's "Letters ;" Pope's "Essay on Man ;" "Gil Blas" and the Odes of Horace. All this study of the writings of others led to a desire to become a writer herself, and

about this time she traced the outline

of her "Simple Story."

The intimacy with Mrs. Siddons grew apace, and included her brother, John Philip Kemble, who soon became,

as did almost every male acquaintance, Mrs. Inchbald's sworn friend and cham

pion. It says much for her character and disposition that although so universally admired by men, she also won and retained the affection of all women who knew her intimately. She seems to have had in perfection the indefinable, irresistible gift of pleasing which

we call charm.

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running out in the sunset to the moor for a game at blindman's buff or pussin-the-corner. What a picture it suggests the red glow in the sky, the broad purple shadows on the heath, and such forms of beauty as Mrs. Siddons, Kemble, and Mrs. Inchbald racing in and out among the gorse and brackenHamlet and Lady Macbeth playing with the grace and mirth and abandonment of children!

The more serious aspect of Mrs. Inchbald's many-sided nature is amply manifested in her journal, where she records her correspondence on questions of faith with the enlightened and sympathetic Father Jerningham, whose acquaintance she had made in Paris-her attendance at mass with her husband and friends, and her reading the service in French to Inchbald and Kemble when there was no chapel in the neighborhood.*

When visiting York for professional purposes, the families still lived together and shared each other's studies and amusements. Mr. Inchbald carried his paint-box and easel into Mrs. Siddons' room when illness prevented her from leaving it, and Kemble began a course of English History, reading aloud to Mrs. Inchbald, who made notes of the chief facts as she went on. She also began to make an abridgment of the Bible in French.

The pleasant intimacy was broken up by the actors being informed against as rogues and vagabonds, and ordered by the magistrates of York to quit the town. The Kemble family departed to Liverpool, and the Inchbalds to Canterbury, with such scanty means that the only meal they could afford for two days was breakfast. Perhaps these long fasts (not dignified by being part of Catholic observance) may to some extent excuse an ebullition of impatience that Mrs. Inchbald penitently relates. Her husband was so busy copying a por

made toys from wire, wax, thread or clay, to her infinite amusement.

*Her diary also contains the following prayer: "Almighty God, look down upon thy erring creature! Pity my darkness and my imperfections, and direct me to the truth. Make me humble under the difficulties which adhere to my faith, and patient under the perplexities which accompany its practice."

trait of Garrick, that he did not immediately obey her call to dinner, on which, with swift vengeance, she tore his copy to pieces!

Even at this time, when her own resources were so limited, Mrs. Inchbald contrived to assist her mother and sister Dolly, who, though still at Standingfield, were less prosperous than formerly; and she then began the course of self denial, almost amounting to penuriousness, by which she all her life contrived to help her family. It was to obtain the control of some money for this purpose that she incurred the anger of her husband by asking that their salaries might be divided. Her friends, meantime, were being roughly used in Liverpool. Kemble writes to her :

"Madam, I know you love news. I hope you will find mine entertaining, and excuse my boldness in taking my sister's employ ment from her. But why should I endeavor to find

excuses for doing what I think an honor to me? Without more preamble, then, our affairs here are dreadful. On Monday night we opened our theatre. Before the play began, Mr. Younger advanced before the curtain if pos licly been threatened for presuming to bring sible to prevent any riot, with which he had pub. any company to Liverpool who had not played before the king. In vain did he attempt to oratorize. The remorseless villains threw up their hats, hissed, kicked, stamped, bawled, did everything to prevent his being heard. After being saluted with volleys of potatoes and broken bottles he thought proper to depute Siddons as his advocate, who entered bearing a board large enough to secure his person, inscribed with Mr. Younger's petition to be heard. The rogues would hear nothing, and Siddons may thank his wooden protector that his bones are whole. Mrs. Siddons entered next, P.S. and Mrs. Kniveton O.P.— Mais aussi infortunées-hé bien! Madame Kniveton a la mauvaise fortune de tomber dans un convulsion sur les plancs! The wretches laugh. ed. They next extinguished all the lights round the house; jumped on the stage, brushed every lamp out with their hats; took mined to repeat this till they have another back their money, and left the theatre, detercompany. Well, Madam, I was going to ask what you think of all this; but I can see you laughing!"

Among other news Kemble tells his friend that he has finished his tragedy (Belisarius) and sent it to Harris at Covent Garden, "Who returned it unopened, with an assurance that it would not do." Six months later, however, it was produced at Hull, Mrs. Inchbald acting in it and speaking the epilogue.

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