speeches. But there was eloquence in her very silence and complete
repose. She could relate a whole history by her changes of facial
expression. She possessed special powers of self-control; she was
under subjection to both art and nature when she seemed to abandon
herself the most absolutely to the whirlwind of her passion. There
were no undue excesses of posture, movement, or tone. Her attitudes,
it was once said, were those of "a Pythoness cast in bronze." Her
voice thrilled and awed at its first note: it was so strangely deep,
so solemnly melodious, until, stirred by passion as it were, it became
thick and husky in certain of its tones; but it was always audible,
articulate, and telling, whether sunk to a whisper or raised
clamorously. Her declamation was superb, if, as critics reported,
there had been decline in this matter during those later years of her
life, to which my own acquaintance with Rachel's acting is confined. I
saw her first at the Francais in 1849, and I was present at her last
performance at the St. James' Theatre in 1853, having in the interval
witnessed her assumption of certain of her most admired characters.
And it may be true, too, that, like Kean, she was more and more
disposed, as the years passed, to make "points," to slur over the less
important scenes, and reserve herself for a grand outburst or a
vehement climax, sacrificing thus many of the subtler graces,
refinements, and graduations of elocution, for which she had once been
famous. To English ears, it was hardly an offence that she broke up
the sing-song of the rhymed tirades of the old plays and gave them a
more natural sound, regardless of the traditional methods of speech of
Clairon, Le Kain, and others of the great French players of the past.

[Illustration: Rachel as the Muse of Greek Tragedy.]

Less success than had been looked for attended Rachel's invasion of
the repertory of Mlle. Mars, an actress so idolized by the Parisians
that her sixty years and great portliness of form were not thought
hindrances to her personation of the youthful heroines of modern
comedy and drama. But Rachel's fittest occupation and her greatest
triumphs were found in the classical poetic plays. She, perhaps,
intellectualized too much the creations of Hugo, Dumas, and Scribe;
gave them excess of majesty. Her histrionic style was too exalted an
ideal for the conventional characters of the drama of her own time; it
was even said of her that she could