eight, or nine o'clock, just as it happened; and he had scarcely drunk his claret and got the room filled with wax lights, without which he could not exist, when he sent for me; and lo, and behold, the business was, that he was miserable on account of Tom's being on the ice, that he would certainly be drowned, &c. &c.; and that he begged it of me, as the greatest favour I could do him, in some way or other to prevent it. I expostulated with him,—that I skaited myself that I had a servant with a rope and ladder at the bank-that the ice would now bear a waggon, &c. &c; and at last, seeing me grow half angry at his unreasonableness, he acquiesced in what I said; and calling for his carriage, as he must be at Drury-Lane that night he said (it was then eleven, and he was nine miles off), he withdrew. In about half an hour after, as I was going to bed, I heard a violent ringing at the gate; I was wanted; and sure enough, what should I see, glaring through the bars, and outshining the lamps of the carriage, what, but the fine eyes of Sheridan. "Now do not laugh at me Smyth," he said, "but I cannot rest or think about any thing but this d-d ice and this skaiting, and you must promise me that there shall be no more of it." I said what may be supposed; and, in short, was at last obliged to thrust my hand through the bars, which he shook violently,

in token that his wishes should be obeyed. "Never was such a nonsensical person as this father of yours," said I to Tom. There was no difficulty in coming to a common vote on that point; and so, after spending nearly an hour abusing him, half laughing and half crying, for I was as fond of skaiting as my pupil could be, lamenting our unhappy fate, we went to bed. We sent up various petitions and remonstrances while the frost lasted, but all in vain. "Have a glass case constructed for your son at once," said Mr. Grey to him,—an observation which Tom used to quote to me with particular approbation and delight. I talked over the subject of Mr. Sheridan and his idle nervousness with Mrs. Canning, who lived at the end of the village. She told me that nothing could be done-that he would teaze and irritate Mrs. Sheridan in this manner till she was ready to dash her head against the wall, being of the same temperament of genius as her husband—that she has seen her burst into tears and leave the room; and then the scene changed, and the wall seemed full as likely to receive his head in turn. The folly, however, Mrs. Canning said, was not merely once and away, but was too often repeated; and Mrs. Canning used sometimes, as she told me, to be not a little thankful that she was herself of a more ordinary clay, and that the gods, as in the case of Audrey, had not made her poetical.

By infatuated conduct of this kind, even while she was the object of his adoration, and by outraging her feelings by the most unpardonable indulgence of his unlawful passions, Mr. Sheridan at last destroyed the patience, and probably alienated the heart, of this incomparable woman; and in fatal hour, brought up as she had been, and living as she still was, in gay and fashionable society, she turned to listen to Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who was a perfect madman about her.

Such was the account given me by Mrs. Canning, the aunt of the celebrated orator, who had been from the first her devoted and beloved friend; and in whose sympathy with genius she had not only met that admiration which she had experienced from others, but in whose regular principles of duty and religion she had found afterwards, in the hours of sickness and of need, that consolation and support which the world, of which she had been the charm and the idol, could now not even attempt to supply.

This representation of Mrs. Canning I saw confirmed in the pages of a manuscript book of verses that had belonged to Mrs. Sheridan, and had descended to Mrs. Canning at her death. There was a poem in her hand-writing, with her initials at the end, inscribed To, and which began thus:

C

"Ah! why, while anguish rends her heart,
Avoid'st thou thus with curious art,

To meet thy Laura's eye?

No frown resentful sure is there,

A meek and a forgiving tear

Would rather claim thy sigh.

"When first the cruel truth I found,
Nor thou thy love of change disowned,
Fierce madness seized my brain;
But happier now, a milder grief,
A softer thought can bring relief,

I weep and can complain.”

In this manner she goes on through several stanzas, concluding with an entreaty, that he would, by a renewal of his love, restore himself and her to their former happiness. I was much affected by the verses, but could neither copy nor presume to get them off by heart, without the leave of Mr. Sheridan-a leave which I durst not ask. Afterwards, when Mrs. Sheridan was sinking in a decline, on some occasion or other, Mrs. Canning told me (she forgot what), she made some allusion or other, which threw Sheridan into a perfect paroxysm of grief and remorse. "Oh! not a word of that kind," he said, "she is an angel if ever there was one. It is all my fault ;—it is I, I that was the guilty fiend,”—and he sunk into a chair, covering his face with his hands, and quite convulsed with the agony of his feelings.

No attention (I understood from Mrs. Canning) was ever equal to his, during the last stages

of her illness. He bore her in his arms to the spring, he was never absent from her, he watched by her bedside, read the Scriptures to her, joined in her devotions, and rendered her every office of tenderness and duty that could now be offered her by an unhappy man, repentant and afflicted, and that knew not how to lose her. But he was doomed to lose her, and he saw the grave close upon her; and well can I understand a few words that were found in his hand-writing, intimating that to see this last victory of the grave was a sharper trial than even to witness the shock of death itself. The sufferings of Sheridan on this occasion were such, that if the strong excitements of political warfare and embarrassed circumstances had not immediately assailed him, it is possible that a most salutary change might have taken place in his thoughts and conduct. It must have been two years after, when I turned round to him one evening as we stood by the fire, to observe to him how delightfully Miss Linley was then singing for us-"Oh heavens !" he cried, "if you had heard Mrs. Sheridan sing that song." The tears started to his eyes, and I had evidently touched a string on which still hung many sorrows.

When I went down to join my pupil at Wanstead, one of the first objects I observed was a child of the most extraordinary beauty that I had ever seen. Though no baby fancier, I watched it