al anguish needing consolation and counsel fled to her as to a
convent for protection and guidance. Her published writings established
such a claim upon her sympathy in the hearts of her readers that much of
her time for twenty years before she died was spent in helping others,
by correspondence and personal contact, to submit to the sorrows God had
cast upon them. She believed, with Milton, that it is miserable enough
to be blind, but still more miserable not to be able to bear blindness.
Her own earlier life had been darkened by griefs, and she knew from a
deep experience what it was to enter the cloud and stand waiting and
hoping in the shadows. In her instructive and delightful society I spent
many an hour twenty years ago in the houses of Procter and Rogers and
Kenyon. Procter, knowing my admiration of the Kemble family, frequently
led the conversation up to that regal line which included so many men
and women of genius. Mrs. Jameson was never weary of being questioned
as to the legitimate supremacy of Mrs. Siddons and her nieces, Fanny and
Adelaide Kemble. While Rogers talked of Garrick, and Procter of Kean,
she had no enthusiasms that were not bounded in by those fine spirits
whom she had watched and worshipped from her earliest years.

Now and then in the garden of life we get that special bite out of the
sunny side of a peach. One of my own memorable experiences in that way
came in this wise. I had heard, long before I went abroad, so much of
the singing of the youngest child of the "Olympian dynasty," Adelaide
Kemble, so much of a brief career crowded with triumphs on the lyric
stage, that I longed, if it might be possible, to listen to the "true
daughter of her race." The rest of her family for years had been, as it
were, "nourished on Shakespeare," and achieved greatness in that high
walk of genius; but now came one who could interpret Mozart, Bellini,
and Mercadante, one who could equal what Pasta and Malibran and Persiani
and Grisi had taught the world to understand and worship. "Ah!" said a
friend, "if you could only hear _her_ sing 'Casta Diva'!" "Yes," said
another, "and 'Auld Robin Gray'!" No wonder, I thought, at the universal
enthusiasm for a vocal and lyrical artist who can alternate with equal
power from "Casta Diva" to "Auld Robin Gray." I _must_ hear her! She had
left the stage, after a brief glory upon it, but as Madame Sartoris she
sometimes sang at home to her guests.

"We are invited to hear