as must have existed--if
the old records are read aright--in that fine and famous actor, John
Henderson, and which certainly existed in the late Benjamin Webster. It
has, however, always been rare upon the stage, and, like all rare
jewels, it is precious. The actor who, from an habitual mood of sweet
gravity and patient gentleness, can rise to the height of delirious
passion, and there sustain himself at a poise of tempestuous
concentration which is the fulfilment of nature, and never once seem
either ludicrous or extravagant, is an actor of splendid power and
extraordinary self-discipline. Such an actor is Willard. The blue eyes,
the slightly olive complexion, the compact person, the picturesque
appearance, the melodious voice, the flexibility of natural action, and
the gradual and easy ascent from the calm level of domestic peace to the
stormy summit of passionate ecstasy recall personal peculiarities and
artistic methods long passed away. The best days of Edwin L. Davenport
and the younger James Wallack are brought to mind by them.

In the drama of _The Middleman_ Willard had to impersonate an inventor,
of the absorbed, enthusiastic, self-regardless, fanatical kind. Cyrus
Blenkarn is a potter. His genius and his toil have enriched two persons
named Chandler, father and son, who own and conduct a porcelain factory
in an English town of the present day. Blenkarn has two daughters, and
one of them is taken from him by the younger Chandler. The circumstances
of that deprivation point at disgrace, and the inventor conceives
himself to have suffered an odious ignominy and irreparable wrong. Young
Chandler has departed and so has Mary Blenkarn, and they are eventually
to return as husband and wife; but Cyrus Blenkarn has been aroused from
his reveries over the crucible and furnace,--wherein he is striving to
discover a lost secret in the potter's art that will make him both rich
and famous,--and he utters a prayer for vengeance upon these Chandlers,
and he parts from them. A time of destitution and of pitiful struggle
with dire necessity, sleepless grief, and the maddening impulse of
vengeance now comes upon him, so that he is wasted almost to death. He
will not, however, abandon his quest for the secret of his art. He may
die of hunger and wretchedness; he will not yield. At the last moment
of his trial and his misery--alone--at night--in the alternate lurid
blaze and murky gloom of his firing-house--success is conquered: