s which belong to the great scheme of
life, and not to this art, or any art, alone. You all know the story
of the painter who, in despair at not being able to carry out the
intention of his imagination, dashed his brush at the imperfect
canvas, and with the scattering paint produced by chance the very
effect which his brush guided by his skill alone, had failed to
achieve. The actor's business is primarily to reproduce the ideas of
the author's brain, to give them form, and substance, and color, and
life, so that those who behold the action of a play may, so far as
can be effected, be lured into the fleeting belief that they behold
reality. Macready, who was an earnest student, defined the art of the
actor "to fathom the depths of character, to trace its latent motives,
to feel its finest quivering of emotion, is to comprehend the thoughts
that are hidden under words, and thus possess one's-self of the actual
mind of the individual man"; and Talma spoke of it as "the union
of grandeur without pomp, and nature without triviality"; whilst
Shakespeare wrote, "the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to
nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the
very age and body of the time his form and pressure."

This effort to reproduce man in his moods is no mere trick of fancy
carried into execution. It is a part of the character of a strong
nation, and has a wider bearing on national life than perhaps
unthinking people are aware. Mr. Froude, in his survey of early
England, gives it a special place; and I venture to quote his words,
for they carry with them, not only their own lesson, but the authority
of a great name in historical research.

"No genius can dispense with experience; the aberrations of power,
unguided or ill-guided, are ever in proportion to its intensity, and
life is not long enough to recover from inevitable mistakes. Noble
conceptions already existing, and a noble school of execution which
will launch mind and hand at once upon their true courses, are
indispensable to transcendent excellence; and Shakespeare's plays were
as much the offspring of the long generations who had pioneered his
road for him, as the discoveries of Newton were the offspring of those
of Copernicus.

"No great general ever arose out of a nation of cowards; no great
statesman or philosopher out of a nation of fools; no great artist out
of a nation o