—perfect quiet—repose. No more of
Romeo."

"O, Doctor," exclaimed Amelia, "I am
dying to see Romeo once more. Tell them
it will do me good. Doctor! Doctor! Dear
doctor! Romeo is the only medicine for my
complaint, Romeo! Dear Romeo!"

"Nonsense! You must not talk in this
way."

"I shall go mad if I do not see Romeo
again. His voice and his words are still
ringing in my ears:

By a name
I know not how to tell thee who I am:
My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,
Because it is an enemy to thee;
Had I it written, I would tear the word."

"Pooh! pooh! " cried Garrick. "Old as
I am, I could make a better Romeo than the
one you are raving about!"

"Ah, no, doctor. There cannot be another
Romeo."

"Indeed? Now, listen!—

With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls;
For stony limits cannot hold love out.
And what love can do, that dares love attempt:
Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me.
Alack! there lies more peril in thine eye,
Than twenty of these swords; look thou but
sweet,
And I am proof against their enmity."

Here Garrick threw aside his wig and
cloak, and continued:

"I have night's cloak to hide me from their sight;
And but thou love me, let them find me here:
My life were better ended by their hate,
Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love."

The girl rose from the couch and threw
herself into the arms of Garrick, whom
she now recognised as the real Romeo. The
scene that ensues is admirably conceived
and well worked out by the German dramatist,
and is, on the whole, the best scene in
the piece. Whilst holding the beautiful girl,
senseless with her emotion, in his arms, he
reproaches himself with having gone too far;
with having strengthened the love he had
pledged himself to extinguish. His heart
returns the passion, and he asks himself the
question whether he dare be faithless to his
word? Then comes the struggle between
love and honour, passion and faith; and for
a while it is hard to say which will have the
mastery. The "situation" is, in some respects,
quite as fine as that at the end of the
First Act of Bulwer's play, The Lady of
Lyons. Conscience, however, gains the day
over Inclination, and Garrick restores the
pleasing burden, which he has sustained in
his arms, to the couch on which she had been
sitting. He then continues to act the part of
Romeo; but holds in one hand a decanter,
and in the other a tumbler, stopping
occasionally to drink. Presently he affects
intoxication, talks incoherently, and suddenly
begins to act the scene between Richard the
Third and Lady Anne.

"And who is Lady Anne? " inquires the
girl, not a little jealous, and rather disgusted.

"She that I am going to woo to-night,"
replies Garrick.

"But you have sworn to me."

"For that matter I swear to everybody."

"Then, you are perjured."

"Not at all. I am an actor, and I play all
parts. To-night I shall be a king; to-morrow
night I shall be a beggar; the night after, a
thief. Yes, I swear to everybody. Sometimes
to queens, duchesses, and countesses,
and not unfrequently to chambermaids and
fish-fags."

"Then, you are not Romeo?"

"Only on the stage; and off the stage
there is no Romeo."

Here the play (of which the above is but a
bare outline), to all intents and purposes
ends. The young lady is awakened from her
delusion, and returns to the country,
prepared, of course, to accept the hand of a
suitor whom she has recently slighted. The
old baronet is delighted, and the rest of the
dramatis personae are perfectly satisfied and
happy. And so was the audience on the
occasion when I had the pleasure of seeing the
piece represented in Berlin some few years
ago.

Since the above was written, the author
has had a conversation with a gentleman of
eighty-two years of age—a gentleman whose
name is a sufficient guarantee for the truth of
his statement. He says: "I knew Mrs.
Garrick (the actor's widow) in the evening of
her life, and a very charming and clever
woman she was—devoted to the memory of
her husband, whom she idolised during his
lifetime. She was a German, who came to
England under the protection and auspices
of the Countess of Burlington, at whose
mansion Garrick, a favoured guest, first met
her. I have frequently heard Mrs. Garrick
tell the story of which the German dramatist
has availed himself, and therefore I know it
to be a fact, and not a fiction. It was Garrick's
noble conduct on this occasion that
induced the Countess of Burlington to give
her consent, for a long time withheld, to their
nuptials—the nuptials of Garrick and his
wife; for, although the countess received
Garrick as a guest, and had vast admiration
for his talents and his genius, nevertheless
she was opposed to his marriage with a lady
under her protection, and one whom she
expected would form a matrimonial alliance
of a loftier character in the worldly sense of
that phrase."