his head and arms on the table. I was horribly
frightened, and turned as cold as stone, and for some minutes could
not muster up courage enough to speak to him. At last I got up and
went to him, and, on my touching his arm, he started up and
exclaimed, "Good God, what will become of us all!" I tried to
comfort him, and spoke for a long time, but much, I fear, as a
blind man speaks of colors. I do not know, and I do not believe any
one knows, the real state of terrible involvement in which this
miserable concern is wrapped. What I dread most of all is that my
father's health will break down. To-day, while he was talking to
me, I saw him suddenly put his hand to his side in a way that sent
a pang through my heart. He seems utterly prostrated in spirit, and
I fear he will brood himself ill. God help us all! I came home with
a heavy heart, and got ready my things for the theater, and went
over my part. Emily called.... She brought me my aunt Siddons's
sketches of Constance and Lady Macbeth. They are simply written,
and though not analytically deep or powerful, are true, clear, and
good, as far as their extent reaches. She thinks Constance more
motherly than queenly, and I do not altogether agree with her. I do
not think the scene after Arthur is taken prisoner alone
establishes my aunt's position; the mother's sorrow there sweeps
every other consideration away. It is before that that I think her
love for her child is in some measure mixed with the feeling of the
sovereign for his heir; a love of power, in fact, embodied in the
boy who was to continue the dominion of a race of princes. He was
her royal child, and that I do not think she ever forgot till he
was, in her imagination, her dead child. She says she could endure
his being thrust from all his rights if he had been a less gracious
creature, and goes on--

"But thou art fair, dear boy: and at thy birth
Nature and fortune joined to make thee great;"

and then bursts forth into her furious vituperation of those whose
treachery has frustrated his natural claim to greatness. The woman,
too, who in the utmost bitterness of disappointment, in the utter
helplessness and desolation of betrayal, and the prostration of
anguish and despair, calls on the earth, not for a shelter, not for
a grav