fifth theatre I remember being burnt. Canning was speaking when the
account reached the House. The Debate was immediately interrupted,
and it was proposed to adjourn, but Sheridan requested they would
not postpone it for him, and it went on. Knox, with his good-humour,
asked Anne if he was not to have a ticket in my box, but she told
him, as he could not want one at present, he should have one from
the beginning of April.

Your father and Lord James [13] go to the Speaker's to-night. We are
grown very good and walk in Hyde Park every day. From Ramsgate, I hear
that the place is full of poor Irish soldiers who are dying fast. I
fear the mortality has been so great since the return of the Army that
it will increase the loss of men largely.


The destruction of Drury Lane was rendered yet more tragic by the
conditions under which the news of such a startling disaster reached those
who were most affected by it. "On the 24th of February," Michael Kelly
relates, "Mr Richard Wilson gave a dinner to the principal actors and
officers of Drury Lane Theatre, at his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields. All
was mirth and glee; it was about 11 o'clock when Mr Wilson rose and drank
'Prosperity and Success to Drury Lane Theatre.' We filled a bumper to the
toast; and at the very moment when we were raising the glasses to our
lips, repeating '_Success to Drury Lane Theatre_' in rushed the younger
Miss Wilson and screamed out, '_Drury Lane Theatre is in flames!_' We ran
into the Square and saw the dreadful sight. The fire raged with such fury
that it perfectly illuminated Lincoln's Inn Fields with the brightness of
day. We proceeded to the scene of destruction. Messrs Peake and Dunn, the
Treasurers, dashed up the stairs, at the hazard of their lives, to the
iron Chest in which papers of the greatest consequence were deposited.