had stood her friend behind the scenes, and even recommended her promotion to some of her little parts.  But again the old man was reputed to be worth a world of money.  He was supposed to have fifty pounds a year clear of the theatre.  And then came staring upon her the figures of her little stockingless and shoeless sisters.  And when she looked at her own neat white cotton stockings, which her situation at the theatre had made it indispensable for her mother to provide for her, with hard straining and pinching from the family stock, and thought how glad she should be to cover their poor feet with the same—­and how then they could accompany her to rehearsals, which they had hitherto been precluded from doing, by reason of their unfashionable attire—­in these thoughts she reached the second landing-place—­the second, I mean from the top—­for there was still another left to traverse.

Now virtue support Barbara!

And that never-failing friend did step in—­for at that moment a strength not her own, I have heard her say, was revealed to her—­a reason above reasoning—­and without her own agency, as it seemed (for she never felt her feet to move) she found herself transported back to the individual desk she had just quitted, and her hand in the old hand of Ravenscroft, who in silence took back the refunded treasure, and who had been sitting (good man) insensible to the lapse of minutes, which to her were anxious ages; and from that moment a deep peace fell upon her heart, and she knew the quality of honesty.

A year or two’s unrepining application to her profession brightened up the feet, and the prospects, of her little sisters, set the whole family upon their legs again, and released her from the difficulty of discussing moral dogmas upon a landing-place.

I have heard her say, that it was a surprise, not much short of mortification to her, to see the coolness with which the old man pocketed the difference, which had caused her such mortal throes.

This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800, from the mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford,[1] then sixty-seven years of age (she died soon after); and to her struggles upon this childish occasion I have sometimes ventured to think her indebted for that power of rending the heart in the representation of conflicting emotions, for which in after years she was considered as little inferior (if at all so in the part of Lady Randolph) even to Mrs. Siddons.

[Footnote 1:  The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she changed, by successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barry, and Crawford.  She was Mrs. Crawford, and a third time a widow, when I knew her.]

THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY

IN A LETTER TO R——­ S——­, ESQ.