dark and lowering skies the chill wind of the sea might
moan through monastic ruins and crumbling battlements. Edgar of
Ravenswood, standing by his lonely hearth, beneath the groined arches of
his seaside tower, revealed by the flickering firelight, looked the
ideal of romantic manhood; the incarnation of poetic fancy and of
predestinate disaster. Above the story of _Ravenswood_ there is steadily
and continuously impending, and ever growing darker and coming nearer,
the vague menace of terrible calamity. This element of mystery and dread
was wrought into the structural fibre of Henry Irving's performance of
the part, and consistently coloured it. The face of Edgar was made to
wear that haunted look which,--as in the countenance of Charles the
First, in Vandyke's portraits,--may be supposed, and often has been
supposed, to foreshadow a violent and dreadful death. His sudden tremor,
when at the first kiss of Lucy Ashton the thunder is heard to break
above his ruined home, was a fine denotement of that subtle quality; and
even through the happiness of the betrothal scene there was a hint of
this black presentiment--just as sometimes on a day of perfect sunshine
there is a chill in the wind that tells of approaching storm. All this
is warranted by the prophetic rhymes which are several times spoken,
beginning--"When the last lord of Ravenswood to Ravenswood shall ride."
A crone, Ailsie Gourlay by name, embodied with grim and grisly vigour by
Alice Marriott,--whose ample voice and exact elocution, together with
her formidable stature and her faculty of identification with the
character that she assumes and with the spirit of the story, made her of
great value to this play--hovered around Ravenswood, and aided to keep
this presage of evil doom fitfully present in the consciousness of its
victim. Henry Irving gave to the part its perfectly distinct
individuality, and in that respect made as fine a showing as he has ever
made of his authority as an actor. There was never the least doubt as to
what Ravenswood is and what he means. The peculiar elocution of Henry
Irving, when he is under the influence of great excitement, is not
effective upon all persons; but those who like it consider it far more
touching than a more level, more sonorous, and more accurate delivery.
He wrought a great effect in the scene of the marriage-contract. Indeed,
so powerful, sincere, and true was the acting upon all sides, at this
point, that not until t