scene of the
distribution of the flowers. The actress evinced comprehension of the
character in every fibre of its being, and she embodied it with the
affluent vitality of splendid health and buoyant temperament--presenting
a creature radiant with goodness and happiness, exquisite in natural
refinement, piquant with archness, soft, innocent, and tender in
confiding artlessness, and, while gleeful and triumphant in beautiful
youth, gently touched with an intuitive pitying sense of the thorny
aspects of this troubled world. The giving of the flowers completely
bewitched her auditors. The startled yet proud endurance of the king's
anger was in an equal degree captivating. Seldom has the stage displayed
that rarest of all combinations, the passionate heart of a woman with
the lovely simplicity of a child. Nothing could be more beautiful than
she was to the eyes that followed her lithe figure through the merry
mazes of her rustic dance--an achievement sharply in contrast with her
usually statuesque manner. It "makes old hearts fresh" to see a
spectacle of grace and joy, and that spectacle they saw then and will
not forget. The value of those impersonations of Hermione and Perdita,
viewing them as embodied interpretations of poetry was great, but they
possessed a greater value and a higher significance as denotements of
the guiding light, the cheering strength, the elevating loveliness of a
noble human soul. They embodied the conception of the poet, but at the
same time they illumined an actual incarnation of the divine spirit.
They were like windows to a sacred temple, and through them you could
look into the soul of a true woman--always a realm where thoughts are
gliding angels, and feelings are the faces of seraphs, and sounds are
the music of the harps of heaven.

VI.

HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY IN OLIVIA.

It has sometimes been thought that the acting of Henry Irving is seen at
its best in those impersonations of his that derive their vitality from
the grim, ghastly, and morbid attributes of human nature. That he is a
unique actor, and distinctively a great actor, in Hamlet, Mathias,
Eugene Aram, Louis XI., Lesurque, and Dubosc, few judges will deny. His
performances of those parts have shown him to be a man of weird
imagination, and they have shown that his characteristics, mental and
spiritual, are sombre. Accordingly, when it was announced that he would
play Dr. Primrose--Goldsmith's simple, virtuous, hom