we dream, of beauty and of anguish are centred in one image. In
this we may see all the terrors of the moving hand of fate. In this we
may almost hear a warning voice out of heaven, saying that nowhere
except in duty shall the human heart find refuge and peace--or, if not
peace, submission.

The question whether Shakespeare's Juliet be correctly interpreted is
not one of public importance. It might be ever so correctly interpreted
without producing the right effect. There have been many Juliets. There
has, in our time, been no Juliet so completely fascinating and
irresistible as that of Adelaide Neilson. Through the medium of that
Shakespearean character the actress poured forth that strange,
thrilling, indescribable power which more than anything else in the
world vindicates by its existence the spiritual grandeur and destiny of
the human soul. Neither the accuracy of her ideals nor the fineness of
her execution would have accomplished the result that attended her
labours and crowned her fame. There was an influence back of these--a
spark of the divine fire--a consecration of the individual life--as
eloquent to inform as it was potent to move. Adelaide Neilson was one of
those strange, exceptional natures that, often building better than they
know, not only interpret "the poet's dream" but give to it an added
emphasis and a higher symbolism. Each element of her personality was
rich and rare. The eyes--now glittering with a mischievous glee that
seemed never to have seen a cloud or felt a sorrow, now steady, frank,
and sweet, with innocence and trust,--could, in one moment, flash with
the wild fire of defiance or the glittering light of imperious command,
or, equally in one moment, could soften with mournful thought and sad
remembrance, or darken with the far-off look of one who hears the waving
wings of angels and talks with the spirits of the dead. The face, just
sufficiently unsymmetrical to be brimful of character, whether piquant
or pensive; the carriage of body,--easy yet quaint in its artless grace,
like that of a pretty child in the unconscious fascination of infancy;
the restless, unceasing play of mood, and the instantaneous and perfect
response of expression and gesture,--all these were the denotements of
genius; and, above all these, and not to be mistaken in its irradiation
of the interior spirit of that extraordinary creature, was a voice of
perfect music--rich, sonorous, flexible, vibrant, copious in volum