natural that we should wish to know what Mary Anderson thinks of the “fast-anchored isle” and the folk who dwell therein.  I wish, indeed, that these “Impressions” could have been given in her own words.  The work would have been much better done, and far more interesting; but failing this, I must endeavor, following a recent illustrious example, to give them at second hand.  During the earlier months of her stay among us, she lived somewhat the life of a recluse.  Shut up in a pretty villa under the shadow of the Hampstead Hills, she saw little society but that of a few fellow artists, who found their way to her on Sunday afternoons.  Indeed, she almost shrank from the idea of entering general society.  The English world she wished to know was a world of the past, peopled by the creations of genius; not the modern world, which crowds London drawing-rooms.  She saw the English people from the stage, and they were to her little more than audiences which vanished from her life when the curtain descended.  From her earliest years she had been, in common with many of her countrymen, a passionate admirer of the great English novelist, Dickens.  Much of her leisure was spent in pilgrimages to the spots round London which he has made immortal.  Now and then, with her brother for a protector, she would go to lunch at an ancient hostelry in the Borough, where one of the scenes of Dickens’ stories is laid, but which has degenerated now almost to the rank of a public-house.  Here she would try to people the place in fancy with the characters of the novel.  “To listen to the talk of the people at such places,” she once said to me, “was better than any play I ever saw.”

Stratford-on-Avon too, was, of course, revisited, and many days were spent in lingering lovingly over the memorials of her favorite Shakespeare.  She soon became well known to the guardians of the spot, and many privileges were granted to her not accorded on her first visit, four years before, when she was regarded but as a unit in the crowd of passing visitors who throng to the shrine of the great master of English dramatic art.  On one occasion when she was in the church of Stratford-on-Avon, the ancient clerk asked her if she would mind being locked in while he went home to his tea.  Nothing loath she consented, and remained shut up in the still solemnity of the place.  Kneeling down by the grave of Shakespeare, she took out a pocket “Romeo and Juliet” and recited Juliet’s death scene close to the spot where the great master, who created her, lay in his long sleep.  But presently the wind rose to a storm, the branches of the surrounding trees dashed against the windows, darkness spread through the ghostly aisles, and terror-stricken, Mary fled to the door, glad enough to be released by the returning janitor.