engaged one summer in the northern theatres, observed
with pleasure and astonishment, a young man of abilities far above the
crowd that played with him. To adopt her own words, she at the first
glance discerned a rough, uncleansed diamond sparkling in a heap of
rubbish that surrounded it, and through the soil with which it still was
encrusted emitting brilliant rays of light. It was her delight to
stretch forth her mighty hand to raise genius from depression, and
resolving to raise Hodgkinson she took the most decisive means to do so.
She appointed him to perform the principal characters to her in every
play in which she acted and brought him for the purpose along with her
to all the provincial theatres in which she was engaged.

(_To be continued._)

FOOTNOTES:

[F] Handsome as H. was, he had a strange defect in his eyes: one of them
was smaller than the other, and in his efforts to reduce them to an
equality, he sometimes produced a whimsical archness of physiognomy. He
did not relish its being noticed, however, and thought the young
Irishman very rude.

[G] In the low cant of the Irish, gross adulation is called _the dirty
butter of Ballyhack_.

[H] A JINGLE--means a very small piece of coin in the slang of the low
Irish.

NOKES.

Colley Cibber has transmitted to us in his apology, the
following character of the greatest of all comedians.

Nokes was an actor of a quite different genius from any I have ever
read, heard of, or seen, since or before his time; and yet his general
excellence may be comprehended in one article, viz. a plain and palpable
simplicity of nature, which was so utterly his own, that he was often as
unaccountably diverting in his common speech, as on the stage. I saw him
once, giving an account of some table talk, to another actor behind the
scenes, which a man of quality accidentally listening to, was so
deceived by his manner, that he asked him if that was a new play he was
rehearsing? it seems almost amazing, that this simplicity, so easy to
Nokes, should never be caught by any one of his successors. Leigh and
Underhill have been well copied, though not equalled by others. But not
all the mimical skill of Estcourt (famed as he was for it) though he had
often seen Nokes, could scarce give us an idea of him. After this
perhaps it will be saying less of him, when I own, that though I have
still the sound of every line he spoke, in my ear, which used not to be
thought