e revived _Romeo and
Juliet_ with much splendour at the London Lyceum on November 1, 1884,
and she restored _A Winter's Tale_ to the stage, bringing forward that
comedy on September 10, 1887, and carrying it through the season. She
made several prosperous tours of the English provincial theatres, and
established herself as a favourite actress in fastidious Edinburgh,
critical Manchester, and impulsive but exacting Dublin. The repertory
with which she gained fame and fortune included Juliet, Hermione,
Perdita, Rosalind, Lady Macbeth, Julia, Bianca, Evadne, Parthenia,
Pauline, The Countess, Galatea, Clarice, Ion, Meg Merrilies, Berthe,
and the Duchess de Torrenueva. She incidentally acted a few other parts,
Desdemona being one of them. Her distinctive achievements were in
Shakespearean drama. She adopted into her repertory two plays by
Tennyson, _The Cup_ and _The Falcon_, but never produced them. This
record signifies the resources of mind, the personal charm, the exalted
spirit, and the patient, wisely directed and strenuous zeal that
sustained her achievements and justified her success.

Aspirants in the field of art are continually coming to the surface. In
poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and in acting--which involves and
utilises those other arts--the line of beginners is endless. Constantly,
as the seasons roll by, these essayists emerge, and as constantly, after
a little time, they disappear. The process is sequent upon an obvious
law of spiritual life,--that all minds which are conscious of the art
impulse must at least make an effort toward expression, but that no mind
can succeed in the effort unless, in addition to the art impulse, it
possesses also the art faculty. For expression is the predominant
necessity of human nature. Out of this proceed forms and influences of
beauty. These react upon mankind, pleasing an instinct for the
beautiful, and developing the faculty of taste. Other and finer forms
and influences of beauty ensue, civilisation is advanced, and thus
finally the way is opened toward that condition of immortal spiritual
happiness which this process of experience prefigures and prophesies.
But the art faculty is of rare occurrence. At long intervals there is a
break in the usual experience of stage failure, and some person hitherto
unknown not only takes the field but keeps it. When Garrick came out, as
the Duke of Gloster, in the autumn of 1741, in London, he had never been
heard of, but withi