he curtain began to descend was it remembered
that we were looking upon a fiction and not upon a fact. This points to
the peculiar power that Henry Irving and Ellen Terry conspicuously
possess--of creating and maintaining a perfect illusion.

During the earlier scenes the character of Lucy Ashton is chiefly marked
by the qualities of sweetness and of glee. No one acquainted with the
acting of Ellen Terry would need to be told how well and with what
charming grace those qualities were expressed by her. In the scene of
the wooing, at the Mermaiden's Well, Lucy Ashton was not a cold woman
trying to make herself loved,--which is what most actresses habitually
proffer upon the stage,--but a loving woman, radiant with the
consciousness of the love that she feels and has inspired. Nothing could
be imagined more delicate, more delicious, more enchanting than the
high-bred distinction and soft womanlike tone of that performance. The
character, at the climax of this scene, is made to manifest decision,
firmness, and force; and the superb manner in which she set the
maternal authority at naught and stood by her lover might seem to denote
a nature that no tyranny could subdue. Subdued, however, she is, and
forced to believe ill of her absent lover, and so the fatal marriage
contract is signed and the crash follows. When Ellen Terry came on for
that scene the glee had all vanished; the face was as white as the
garments that enswathed her; and you saw a creature whom the hand of
death had visibly touched. The stage has not at any time heard from any
lips but her own such tones of pathos as those in which she said the
simple words:--

"May God forgive you, then, and pity me--
If God can pity more than mothers do."

It is not a long scene, and happily not,--for the strain upon the
emotion of the actress was intense. The momentary wild merriment, the
agony of the breaking heart, the sudden delirium and collapse, were not
for an instant exaggerated. All was nature--or rather the simplicity,
fidelity, and grace of art that make the effect of nature.

Beautiful scenery, painted by Craven, framed the piece with appropriate
magnificence. The several seaside pictures were admirably
representative of the grandeur, the gaunt loneliness, and the glorious
colour for which Scotland is so much loved.

The public gain in that production was a revival of interest in one of
the most famous novels in the language; the possession of a sceni