ictorial effect of impressive poetic significance. In act second--which
is pictorial almost without intermission--there was a companion
picture, when the Vicar reads, at his fireside, a letter announcing the
restitution of his estate; while his wife and children and Mr. Burchell
are assembled around the spinet singing an old song. The repose with
which Henry Irving made that scene tremulous, almost painful, in its
suspense, was observed as one of the happiest strokes of his art. The
face and demeanour of Dr. Primrose, changing from the composure of
resignation to a startled surprise, and then to almost an hysterical
gladness, presented a study not less instructive than affecting of the
resources of acting. Only two contemporary actors have presented
anything kindred with Mr. Irving's acting in that situation and
throughout the scene that is sequent on the discovery of Olivia's
flight--Jefferson in America and Got in France.

Evil is restless and irresistibly prone to action. Goodness is usually
negative and inert. Dr. Primrose is a type of goodness. In order to
invest him with piquancy and dramatic vigour Henry Irving gave him
passion, and therewithal various attributes of charming eccentricity.
The clergyman thus presented is the fruition of a long life of virtue.
He has the complete repose of innocence, the sweet candour of absolute
purity, the mild demeanour of spontaneous, habitual benevolence, the
supreme grace of unconscious simplicity. But he is human and passionate;
he shows--in his surroundings, in his quick sympathy with natural
beauty, and in his indicated rather than directly stated ideals of
conduct--that he has lived an imaginative and not a prosaic life; he is
vaguely and pathetically superstitious; and while essentially grand in
his religious magnanimity he is both fascinating and morally formidable
as a man. Those denotements point at Henry Irving's ideal. For his
method it is less easy to find the right description. His mechanical
reiteration of the words that are said to him by Sophia, in the moment
when the fond father knows that his idolised Olivia has fled with her
lover; his collapse, when the harmless pistols are taken from his
nerveless hands; his despairing cry, "If she had but died!"; his
abortive effort to rebuke his darling child in the hour of her
abandonment and misery, and the sudden tempest of passionate affection
with which the great tender heart sweeps away that inadequate and paltry
t