stage.

Mr. Young passed the last years of his life at Brighton, and I never
visited that place without going to see him, confined as he latterly was
to his sofa with a complication of painful diseases and the weight of
more than seventy years. The last time I saw him in his drawing-room he
made me sit on a little stool by his sofa--it was not long after my
father, his life-long friend and contemporary's death--and he kept
stroking my hair, and saying to me, "You look so like a child--a good
child." I saw him but once more after this; he was then confined to his
bed. It was on Sunday; he lay propped with pillows in an ample flannel
dressing-gown, with a dark-blue velvet skull-cap on his head, and I
thought I had never seen his face look more strikingly noble and
handsome; he was reading the church service and his Bible, and kept me
by him for some time. I never saw him again.

As a proof of the little poetical imagination which Mr. Young brought to
some of his tragic performances, I remember his saying of his dress in
Cardinal Wolsey, "Well, I never could associate any ideas of grandeur
with this old woman's red petticoat." It would be difficult to say what
his best performances were, for he had never either fire, passion, or
tenderness; but never wanted propriety, dignity, and a certain stately
grace. Sir Pertinax McSycophant and Iago were the best things I ever saw
him act, probably because the sardonic element in both of them gave
partial scope to his humorous vein.

Not long after this we moved to another residence, still in the same
neighborhood, but near the churchyard of Paddington church, which was a
thoroughfare of gravel walks, cutting in various directions the green
turf, where the flat tombstones formed frequent "play-tables" for us;
upon these our nursery-maid, apparently not given to melancholy
meditations among the tombs, used to allow us to manufacture whole
delightful dinner sets of clay plates and dishes (I think I could make
such now), out of which we used to have feasts, as we called them, of
morsels of cake and fruit.

At this time I was about five years old, and it was determined that I
should be sent to the care of my father's sister, Mrs. Twiss, who kept a
school at Bath, and who was my godmother. On the occasion of my setting
forth on my travels, my brother John presented me with a whole
collection of children's books, which he had read and carefully
preserved, and now commended to my use. T