part of the way home together from church, Mrs. Norton broke out about Theodore Hook and his odious ill-nature and abominable coarseness, saying that it was a disgrace and a shame that for the sake of his paper, the John Bull, and its influence, the Tories should receive such a man in society.  I, who but for her outburst upon the subject should have carefully avoided mentioning Hook’s name, presuming that after his previous evening’s performance it could not be very agreeable to Mrs. Norton, now, not knowing very well what to say, but thinking the Sheridan blood (especially in her veins) might have some sympathy with and find some excuse for him, suggested the temptation that the possession of such wit must always be, more or less, to the abuse of it.  “Witty!” exclaimed the indignant beauty, with her lip and nostril quivering, “witty!  One may well be witty when one fears neither God nor devil!” I was heartily glad Hook was not there; he was not particular about the truth, and would infallibly, in some shape or other, have translated for her benefit, “Je crains Dieu, cher Abner, et n’ai point d’autre crainte.”

The Nortons’ house was close to the issue from St. James’s Park into Great George Street.  I remember passing an evening with them there, when a host of distinguished public and literary men were crowded into their small drawing-room, which was literally resplendent with the light of Sheridan beauty, male and female:  Mrs. Sheridan (Miss Callender, of whom, when she published a novel, the hero of which commits forgery, that wicked wit, Sidney Smith, said he knew she was a Callender, but did not know till then that she was a Newgate calendar), the mother of the Graces, more beautiful than anybody but her daughters; Lady Grahame, their beautiful aunt; Mrs. Norton, Mrs. Blackwood (Lady Dufferin), Georgiana Sheridan (Duchess of Somerset and queen of beauty by universal consent), and Charles Sheridan, their younger brother, a sort of younger brother of the Apollo Belvedere.  Certainly I never saw such a bunch of beautiful creatures all growing on one stem.  I remarked it to Mrs. Norton, who looked complacently round her tiny drawing-room and said, “Yes, we are rather good-looking people.”  I remember this evening because of the impression made on me by the sight of these wonderfully “good-looking people” all together, and also because of my having had to sing with Moore—­an honor and glory hardly compensating the distress of semi-strangulation, in order to avoid drowning his feeble thread of a voice with the heavy, robust contralto which I found it very difficult to swallow half of, while singing second to him, in his own melodies, with the other half.  My acquaintance with Mrs. Norton lasted through a period of many years, and, though never very intimate, was renewed with cordiality each time I returned to England.  It began just after I came out on the stage, when I was about twenty, and she a few years older.  My father and mother had known her parents and grandparents, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Miss Lindley, from whom their descendants derived the remarkable beauty and brilliant wit which distinguished them.