part of the scheme succeeded instantly; and I have now before me a list of the holders of the 300 shares, appended to the proposal of 1791, at the head of which the names of the three Trustees, in whom the Theatre was afterwards vested in the year 1793, stand for the following number of shares-Albany Wallis, 20; Hammersley, 50; Richard Ford, 20. But, though the money was raised without any difficulty, the completion of the new building was delayed by various negotiations and obstacles, while, in the mean time, the company were playing, at an enormous expence, first in the Opera-House, and afterwards at the Haymarket-Theatre, and Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Linley were paying interest for the first instalment of the loan.

To these and other causes of the increasing embarrassments of Sheridan is to be added the extravagance of his own style of living, which became much more careless and profuse after death had deprived him of her, whose maternal thoughtfulness alone would have been a check upon such improvident waste. We are enabled to form some idea of his expensive habits, by finding, from the letters which have just been quoted, that he was, at the same time, maintaining three establishments,-one at Wanstead, where his son resided with his tutor; another at Isleworth, which he still held (as I learn from letters directed to him there) in 1793; and the third, his town

house, in Jermyn-Street. Rich and ready as were the resources which the Treasury of the theatre opened to him, and fertile as was his own invention in devising new schemes of finance, such mismanaged expenditure would exhaust even his magic wealth, and the lamp must cease to answer to the rubbing at last.

The tutor, whom he was lucky enough to obtain for his son at this time, was Mr. William Smythe, a gentleman who has since distinguished himself by his classical attainments and graceful talent for poetry. Young Sheridan had previously been under the care of Dr. Parr, with whom he resided a considerable time at Hatton; and the friendship of this learned man for the father could not have been more strongly shown than in the disinterestedness with which he devoted himself to the education of the son. The following letter from him to Mr. Sheridan, in the May of this year, proves the kind feeling by which he was actuated towards him :—

DEAR SIR,

I hope Tom got home safe, and found you in better spirits. He said something about drawing on your banker; but I do not understand the process, and shall not take any step, You will consult your own convenience about these things; for my connection with you is that of friendship and personal regard. I feel and remember slights from those I respect, but acts of kindness I cannot forget; and, though my life has been passed far

VOL. II.

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more in doing than receiving services, yet I know and I value the good dispositions of yourself and a few other friends,-men who are worthy of that name from me.

66 If you choose Tom to return, he knows and you know how glad I am always to see him. If not, pray let him do something, and I will tell you what he should do.

"Believe me, dear Sir,

Yours sincerely,

"S. PARR."

In the spring of this year was established the Society of "The Friends of the People," for the express purpose of obtaining a Parliamentary Reform. To this Association, which, less for its professed object than for the republican tendencies of some of its members, was particularly obnoxious to the loyalists of the day, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Grey, and many others of the leading persons of the Whig party, belonged. Their Address to the People of England, which was put forth in the month of April, contained an able and temperate exposition of the grounds upon which they sought for Reform; and the names of Sheridan, Mackintosh, Whitbread, etc., appear on the list of the Committee by which this paper was drawn up.

It is a proof of the little zeal which Mr. Fox felt at this period on the subject of Reform, that he withheld the sanction of his name from a Sowhich so many of his most intimate po

litical friends belonged. Some notice was, indeed, taken in the House of this symptom of backwardness in the cause; and Sheridan, in replying to the insinuation, said that "they wanted not the signature of his Right Honourable Friend to assure them of his concurrence. They had his bond in the steadiness of his political principles and the integrity of his heart." Mr. Fox himself, however, gave a more definite explanation of the circumstance. "He might be asked," he said, "why his name was not on the list of the Society for Reform? His reason was, that though he saw great and enormous grievances, he did not see the remedy." It is to be doubted, indeed, whether Mr. Fox ever fully admitted the principle upon which the demand for a Reform was founded. When he afterwards espoused the question so warmly, it seems to have been merely as one of those weapons caught up in the heat of a warfare, in which Liberty itself appeared to him too imminently endangered to admit of the consideration of any abstract principle, except that summary one of the right of resistance to power abused. From what has been already said, too, of the language held by Sheridan on this subject, it may be concluded that, though far more ready than his friend to inscribe Reform upon the banner of the party, he had even still less made up his mind as to the practicability or expediency of the measure. Looking upon it as a question, the

agitation of which was useful to Liberty, and at the same time counting upon the improbability of its objects being ever accomplished, he adopted at once, as we have seen, the most speculative of all the plans that had been proposed, and flattered himself that he thus secured the benefit of the general principle, without risking the inconvenience of any of the practical details.

The following extract of a letter from Sheridan to one of his female correspondents, at this time, will show that he did not quite approve the policy of Mr. Fox in holding aloof from the Reformers:

"I am down here with Mrs. Canning and her family, while all my friends and party are meeting in town, where I have excused inyself, to lay their wise heads together in this crisis. Again I say there is nothing but what is unpleasant before my mind. I wish to occupy and fill my thoughts with public matters, and, to do justice to the times, they afford materials enough; but nothing is in prospect to make activity pleasant, or to point one's efforts against one common enemy, making all that engage in the attack cordial, social, and united. on the contrary, every day produces some new schism and absurdity. Windham has signed a nonsensical association with Lord Mulgrave; and when I left town yesterday, I was informed that the Divan, as the meeting at Debrett's is called, were furious at an authentic advertisement from the Duke of Portland against Charles Fox's speech in the Whig Club, which no one before believed to be genuine, but which they now say Dr. Lawrence brought from Burlington-House. If this is so,