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MRS. KEMBLE has been giving a series of dramatic readings in London, and her success in the scene of her early triumphs appears to have been as decided as it was in New York. She was never in a situation more agreeable to her temper and ambition than that represented in the above engraving, which we have copied from one in The Illustrated News. She is triumphant, and "alone in her glory."

Mrs. Kemble is now about forty years of age. Gentleness is acquired in three generations; she is removed but two from the most vulgar condition; and by the mother's side but one. The Kembles of the last age were extraordinary persons. John Philip Kemble and Mrs. Siddons had both remarkable genius, and Charles Kemble has been an actor of consummate talent. Whatever intellect remains in the family is in his children; one of whom is a man of learning and refinement, another a woman of some cleverness in musical art, and Frances Anne, of whom we write more particularly.

The first appearance of Miss Kemble on the stage was on the evening of the 5th October, 1829, at Covent Garden, and was hazarded with the view of redeeming the fortunes of the theater. The play was "Romeo and Juliet," and the heroine was sustained by the debutante with unexpected power. Her Siddonian countenance and expressive eyes were the general theme of admiration; while the tenderness and ardor of her action went to the soul of the spectator, and her well-instructed elocution satisfied the most critical ear. It was then, also, that her father took the part of "Mercutio," for the first time. It is recorded that he earned by it thirteen rounds of applause. Nor was its merit overrated. It was then, and continued to be, a wonderful impersonation of the poetic-comic ideal. On the 21st of the same month of October, the performers of Covent Garden presented to Miss Kemble a gold bracelet as a testimony of the services which she had rendered to the company by her performance of "Juliet." It was not until the 9th of December that she had to change her role. She then performed Belvidera in "Venice Preserved," and achieved another triumph. For some time the part was alternated with that of "Juliet." The latter, during the season, was performed thirty-six times; the former, twenty-three. The "Grecian Daughter," and Mrs. Beverley, Portia in "The Merchant of Venice," Isabella, and Lady Townley, followed, and in all she was eminently successful. Her season finished on the twenty-eighth of May, and in it she performed altogether, one hundred and two times. Her reputation, however, proved to be greater in the metropolis than in the provinces. Nevertheless, on her return to London, she was greeted with an enthusiastic reception. The next season was celebrated by the failure of the "Jew of Aragon," and the affair with Mr. Westmacott; however, Miss Kemble added to her répertoire the characters of Mrs. Haller, Beatrice, Lady Constance, and Bianca in "Fazio."

In 1832 she came with her father to the United States, where she played with unprecedented success in the principal cities, confirming the reputation she had acquired, of being the greatest British actress of the age. While here she published her dramas, "The Star of Seville" and "Francis the First," and at this period she was a frequent contributor to the literary journals,—many of her best fugitive poems having appeared in the old "New York Mirror."

In 1834 she retired from the stage, and was married to Mr. Pierce Butler of Philadelphia, a gentleman of fortune, accomplishments, and an honorable character. The history of this union is sufficiently notorious. On both sides there was ambition: it was a distinction to be accepted by a woman of so much genius; it was a great happiness to change the dominion of a spendthrift and sometimes tyrannical father for that of a rich and indulgent husband. But a woman accustomed to the applause of the theater never yet was content with the repose of domestic life, and she was of all her sex the most ill-fitted by nature for such an existence. Her second resort to the stage in 1847, her fortunes at Manchester and in London, her return to America, her public readings of Shakspeare here, her divorce, and the very curious and unexplained circumstance of her translation of a profligate French play, and disposal of it as a piece of her own original composition, are all matters of too late occurrence to need recapitulation.

She is a woman of masculine abilities, tastes, and energies; fitted better for the camp than for the drawing-room, and often evincing a degree of discontent that she is not a man. She always acts, and has seldom, except when on the stage, the tact or ability even to seem natural. Her equestrian exhibitions in Boston and New York, during her more recent visits, illustrated the quality of her aspirations. Every day, at a particular hour, so that a crowd might assemble to look upon the performance, her horse was brought to the front of her hotel, and when mounted, with affected difficulty, made to rear and pitch as if he never before had felt the saddle or bit, and then to dash off as if upon a race-course or to escape an avalanche. The letters to her husband, with much tact but without any necessity displayed to the public, in her answer to his process for divorce, were admirable as compositions, and seemed to have been written in the very phrensy of passion; but their effect upon the reader was changed somewhat when he reflected that she had been sufficiently self-possessed meanwhile to make careful copies before sending them, to be exhibited, as specimens of her genius, to a mob of the pit, which never fails to recognize a point. Indeed, in petticoats or in pantaloons, making a show of her "heart" in the publication of these letters to a gentleman whom she had treated with every species of contempt, obloquy, and insult, until she had made his home insupportable, or courting the wondering admiration of country bumpkins by unsexing herself for feats of horsemanship, or for other athletic diversions, she is always anxious to produce a sensation, anxious to stir up the gentle public to a roar.

Still, with all her infirmities of taste and temper, Mrs. Kemble is a woman of unquestionable and very decided genius; a genius frequently displayed in literature, where its growth may be traced, in prose, from her foolish "Journal in America" to her more artistic "Year of Consolation;" and in poetry, where its development is seen from its budding in "Frances the First" to its most perfect blossoming in the recent collection of her "Poems." As an actress, her powers and qualifications are probably greater than those of any other tragedienne now on the English stage; and her characteristics and supremacy are likely to be far more profitably as well as distinctly evinced in her "Shakspeare Readings" than in any appearance before the footlights.

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