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tremulous under those haunting influences which, to the imagination, are so thrilling and so splendid. Remorse, it should be remembered, is a misery that is only possible to goodness. A radically wicked person is incapable of suffering anything but physical pain. Iago never suffers. Sir Edward Mortimer, who has committed a partly justifiable homicide, suffers the torments of the damned, because his conscience condemns his crime, and because he dreads that, through detection, his honor will be stained before the eyes of the world. The analysis of his torments is afflicting; yet we should watch them almost as we watch a dying reptile, but that his inherent goodness renders them no less mournful than terrible. All spectacles of pain and wretchedness are distressing; but the quality of the distress which they cause is determined by the nature of the sufferer.

Mathias has done a cruel murder, and robbed his victim, and prospered on the spoils of his crime, but the consequences of his crime have followed him in his own soul. He walks the world in pomp and pleasure——with a slow, corroding misery eating out his heart. He is a living monument of the retributive vengeance of Divine Justice. It never could be difficult for an experienced actor to play this part most effectively, in a professional sense. Mr. Irving has accomplished far more than that. By giving this murderer a human heart; by making patience, tenderness, the motive and passion of his life, and then by depicting, with consummate reality, those agonies of the soul which only such a soul can suffer, he creates an image not less pitiable than horrible of that forlorn humanity, which evil has conquered and which inexorable justice must now destroy. It is, of course, possible to misunderstand an actor's intention; but, whether with or without purpose, Mr. Irving produced the effect of pathos as well as very largely the effect of terror, the latter being predominant, and his method in the latter, being wonderfully subtle and vividly picturesque. The feverish alertness engendered by the strife of a strong will against a sickening apprehension, the desperate sense, not defiant and now abject, of inexorable doom, the slow paralysis of the feelings under the action of remorse——these, indeed were given with appalling truth. Since the old days of Charles Kean no displays of morbid spiritual vivisection has been seen upon the stage that approaches, or even resembles, the dream of Mathias as acted by Henry Irving. The audience was completely spell-bound during this scene. In all the long backward of recollection we find no parallel to this sustainment of tremendous agony in that most difficult of all dramatic conditions, soliloquy. Here, undoubtedly, is the essential spring of Mr. Irving's power: He wields a most fascinating and victorious magnetism, essentially personal. Nothing else could sustain an actor in his complete hold of an audience, through so terrible an ordeal as that.

The effect upon the audience was singular; and, in fact, this actor is one who will always leave upon the same assemblage strangely different impressions. Speaking with reference to execution and quality it may be said that a taste for the acting of Mr. Irving is, to some extent, like the taste for olives——it has to be acquired. But when once it has been acquired it gives its possessor great delight. Mr. Irving is a very peculiar actor. His personality and his methods of art are characterized by special and great fascinations, but also by special and perplexing singularities. His oddities help to make him unique; and these oddities are not, to all persons, agreeable. Some of them, indeed, are defects, and will remain defects till the end of the chapter. Mr. Irving's stage-walk, for example, is sometimes stilted and angular; and this peculiarity, although really natural for him, and one of the results of nervous excitement, wherever it chances to be inharmonious with the character that he personifies, has the effect of an affectation. His stage-talk, furthermore, particularly under the stress of great agitation, is sometimes inarticulate and indistinct. He indulges freely in what Shakespeare has designated "flaws and starts." He uses at times the rapid, tripping enunciation and song-like cadence which are peculiar to the English speech of foreigners, particularly the French. His machinery includes strange gurgitations and darkly lowering glances portentous and vague. His voice——notwithstanding that he is a man of muscular physical constitution, wiry, nervous, and sustained by unflinching endurance and patient, resolute, will——is neither copious nor resonant; not at all the organ of a Forrest or a Salvini, and, therefore, although his tones are often tender, or piercing, or vibrant, he is apt to disappoint the listener, at moments when great vocal resources are desired--as a relief--by the over-wrought emotions of his audience. His range of facial expression includes a wide variety and complexity of meanings, but these are mostly weird, eccentric, saturine, mystical, and hence his face is less eloquent with the elemental feelings of human nature than with its wildness, strangeness, and sombre and agonizing pathos——(the poetry of storm or of desolation)——under the ravages of tragic imagination, intellectual strain, and miserable experience. His smile, indeed, is one of singular sweetness; and sometimes it touches his sad, scholastic, high-bred, noble features with the perfect sunshine of beauty. But equally by temperament, physique, taste and training, Mr. Irving is a man of mysterious quality, and exceptional characteristics. Such a man is not readily comprehended; but, when he is comprehended, he inspires a profound sympathy and admiration.

It is to the puzzling influence of this complex web of beauties and defects, and to the prevalent and predominant singularity of the actor, that divers commentators so monotonously and uselessly refer in ringing the changes upon Mr. Irving's "mannerisms." Some minds will always reject what they cannot understand, and censoriousness ever prefers to dwell upon a fault rather than a merit. But this is not the road to the truth. Neither like nor dislike, neither praise nor censure, is of the least importance alongside of the necessity of interpretation. The liberal judgement pierces to the meaning of the blemishes and of the vagueness, while recognizing and admitting the beauties and the light. Mr. Irving's nature, while capable——as the deepest and sternest of tragic natures often are——of erratic and dazzling excursions into the domain of grim, or grotesque, or farcical humor, and while certainly sensitive and tender, is doubtless more particularly restricted to the region of the melancholy, morbid, saturnine, sardonic, and terrible. His art-methods inevitably, would, under these conditions, be touched with mysticism and grim extravagance; and they certainly are affected by physical impediments——visible wherever repression is substituted for utterance and the shuddering quiver of the quicksand stands for the explosion of the tempest. But,——allowing for every physical inadequacy, and looking through all spiritual vagueness and mystery,——the sensitive and thoughtful observer cannot fall here to discern a glorious instrument of dramatic emotion,——sensitive, tremulous, true,——a soul and mind most rich in the capacity to feel, and to translate, the tragic aspects of humanity. And, surely, this in acting is the main thing: not simply a professional skill; not simply a felicity of special effort; but the potency of individual resource,——behind that skill and that effort,——which makes the great actor a perennial spring of refreshment to the intellectual life of his age.

Mr. Irving, like every other human creature, has his limitations. The work that he displayed last night made evident enough the delicacy of his physical powers, the intricate character of his artistic means, and the perplexing eccentricities of his style. He is the fule and not the trumpet. He could no more produce that mellow thunder of voice, rugged grandeur of form, and affluent and torrid sensuality, which only just fell short of transcendent and overwhelming genius in Edwin Forrest, than he could fly through the heavens. The flow of his spirit could never be the great ninth wave that seems to crush the crag whereon it dashes. He stands forth with all his equipments in order and all his fine faculties in the leash. He is an intellect enthroned above the passions. He knows that inspiration may come, but he will leave that to take care of itself. He works with a thousand subtle touches, with many a seeming accident of shadow, with many a sudden jet of light. He will sometimes leave the senses unthrilled. He will sometimes be fantastic in his ideals. He will sometimes push singularity of treatment to the verge of excess. But, he speaks to the imagination and to the soul; and, in everything that he says and does and is, you feel the nameless charm of genius. Ample discussion may be anticipated as to this actor's ideals of character, as to his suitability to certain parts, and as to the exact nature and limits of his powers of expression. But nobody will doubt that he is often a splendid artist and always a man of genius; that his work is guided by intellectual purpose, and pervaded by that indescribable something which is the consecration of poetry:

"The light which never
Was on land or sea."

The original of "The Bells," "Le Juif Polonais," is a dramatic study by Ereckmann-Chatrian, and, in the French, we believe, was not designed for representation. Mr. Leopold Lewis made the version of it that is used by Mr. Irving, but he has not succeeded in making it much more than a one-part play. This is noted, not as an objection, but merely as a fact. The one-part play is sometimes an excellent thing——as may be seen, for example, in Horne's "Death of Marlowe,"——which is not only one-part but one-act. In construction the chief merit of "The Bells" is that it so deftly surrounds a terrible and tragic experience with the sweet cheerfulness of happy domestic life. Mathias, this agonizing wretch, is literally framed in sunshine. The cold lustre that is made to play about the mystery is, likewise, to be noted as a subtle and brilliant effect of art. Ever and anon, through fifteen years of shuddering dread and stealthy, furtive precaution, the assassin hears the sleigh-bells tinkle, that were on his victim's horse on that terrible winter night of the nameless and hideous murder. This aerial voice, borne on the frosty, glittering air, creates an emotion of apprehensiveness indescribably weird, solemn, and awful. The movement of the play, likewise, is direct and rapid, and its language is appropriate and sincere.

The strength of Mr. Irving's company is not shown in the cast of "The Bells." Mr. Terriss played Christian——the youth who is to marry the daughter of Mathias——and he presented a fine, dashing, earnest young fellow. The rest of the cast suggests no comment. It is not surprising, in either an American or an English theatre, to meet with an average degree of talent in the playing of utility parts.

Our public has just witnessed a brilliant and remarkable success, achieved by Lawrence Barrett, in a poetical tragedy of American authorship, which has held the stage continuously and prosperously for many weeks. Th best of American comedians and one of the few great actors of the world——Mr. Jefferson——is acting here to crowded houses, and with a potential and beautiful alliance of art, oathos and humor. In a neighboring city, within a few days, the leader of the stage in America,——Edwin Booth——only recently returned from triumphant successes in Europe, makes his re-entrance upon that field of dramatic art, which, so far as our country is concerned, owes more to him than to any other living man. In the populous and busy West that Roman hero, John McCullough——that lion-heart which no adversity can conquer!——is everywhere received with affection and acclaim. Across the sea, in the capital city of England, the American actress, Mary Anderson, has met with a triumph unmatched for suddenness and splendor since the days of Miss O'Neill. In other directions nd in other ways the stage is wielding extraordinary power. This period in theatrical history may surely be marked, therefore, as impressive and auspicious. These, in fact, are the palmy days.

It is noticeable, though, that the stage of the present is always " degenerate." Persons who seek " the golden age" invariably find that it retires backward as they advance. Meres, in " Wit's Treasury," which is dated in 1598, when complimenting the poet Drayton, speaks of " these declining and corrupt times, when there is nothing but roguerry in villanous man." No doubt the stage was comprehended in that censure. Yet that was the time of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Burbage. Old Cibber, in his age, could see little or no merit in contemporary players; yet that was the time of Garrick and Maria Arne, of Mossop and Spranger Barry. Smellett's Squire Bramble, speaking no doubt the actual sentiment of that great delineator of character and manners, denotes a little later period,——that of 1770,——as " these times of dullness and degeneracy", Macklin, when an old man, used to cry out, disdainfully, " where are your actors?" Yet Macklin, who had lived in the period of Doggett, Mrs. Barry, Barton Booth, Mrs. Oldfield and Mrs. Bellamy, might, even as he spoke, have seen both Charles and John Kemble, Ned Shuter, Tom King, Mrs. Dancer, and Mrs. Siddons. In 1811, Mary Godfrey, one of the intimate friends of Tom Moore, writing to him about the theatre in London, said that " an author who hopes for success on the stage must fall in with popular taste, which is now at the last gasp and past a;; cure." Yet, at that very moment, Kean and the Kembles, Fawcett and Munden were in full career.

In 1845, in our own country, Mr. James Rees, a lachrymose chronicler of the American theatre, who still survives, described the genius of the drama as " an owl," sitting " in gloom and eternal night," upon the wreck of the stage. Yet that was the time of Junius Brutus Booth, Edwin Forest, Thomas Hambln, Chrles Burke, and the most illustrious of the house of Wallack. So in the present period our theatre is very frequently disparaged, in comparison with a boasted but not very well comprehended past, notwithstanding that, in the day now passing, the American stage is adainted and dignified by Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, Lester Wallack, John McCullough, Lawrence Barrett, William Warren, John Gilbert, Mary Anderson and Clara Morris; while across the Atlantic, the brilliant traditions of Garrick, Kembie, Macready and Phelps are sustained and augmented by the genius and devotion of Henry IRving, by the ample scholarship of men like William Creswick and John Ryder, by the fine brain and splendid energy of Genevieve Ward, by the intellectual character and fiery force of Ada Cavendish, and by the original mind, the weird magnetic temperament, and the strange bewildering beauty of Ellen Terry. The fact is that, in theatrical history, every barren present becomes a golden past, the moment it has drifted sufficiently far away ipon the ocean of time to be hallowed with the lovely mist of antiquity.

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