ct which had interested me from the first.

I rose early, and played four or five hours, as usual, on the piano, and
had lessons from Corri, an Italian, who taught carelessly, and did not
correct a habit I had of thumping so as to break the strings; but I
learned to tune a piano and mend the strings, as there was no tuner at
Burntisland. Afterwards I got over my bad habit and played the music
then in vogue: pieces by Pleyel, Clementi, Steibelt, Mozart, and
Beethoven, the last being my favourite to this day. I was sometimes
accompanied on the violin by Mr. Thomson, the friend of Burns; more
frequently by Stabilini; but I was always too shy to play before people,
and invariably played badly when obliged to do so, which vexed me.

* * * * *

The prejudice against the theatre had been very great in Scotland, and
still existed among the rigid Calvinists. One day, when I was fourteen
or fifteen, on going into the drawing-room, an old man sitting beside my
mother rose and kissed me, saying, "I am one of your mother's oldest
friends." It was Home, the author of the tragedy of "Douglas." He was
obliged to resign his living in the kirk for the scandal of having had
his play acted in the theatre in Edinburgh, and some of his clerical
friends were publicly rebuked for going to see it. Our family was
perfectly liberal in all these matters. The first time I had ever been
in a theatre I went with my father to see "Cymbeline." I had never
neglected Shakespeare, and when our great tragedians, Mrs. Siddons and
her brother, John Kemble, came for a short time to act in Edinburgh, I
could think of nothing else. They were both remarkably handsome, and,
notwithstanding the Scotch prejudice, the theatre was crowded every
night. It was a misfortune to me that my mother never would go into
society during the absence of my father, nor, indeed, at any time,
except, perhaps, to a dinner party; but I had no difficulty in finding a
chaperone, as we knew many people. I used to go to the theatre in the
morning, and ask to see the plan of the house for the evening, that I
might know which ladies I could accompany to their boxes. Of course I
paid for my place. Our friends were so kind that I saw these great
artists, as well as Charles Kemble, Young, and Bannister, in "Hamlet,"
"Macbeth," "Othello," "Coriolanus," "The Gamester," &c.

It was greatly to the honour of the British stage that all the principal
actors, men and women, w