alone from the great
audiences that thronged the theatre night after night--for people will
often throng to see a very unworthy performance--but from the
intellectual character of those audiences, and the manifest pleasure
they derived from seeing the fair English actress.

In every criticism it should be borne in mind that she played under
great disadvantage. She was unfortunately, with some few exceptions,
very badly supported. It seems ungracious, therefore, to search for any
flaw in the performance of such an admirable actress, who has left
behind her so many charming memories; yet it must be admitted that her
acting is not always as faultless as her face. In her Juliet there are
striking inequalities perceptible: sometimes she seems to have just
grasped perfection, then again she makes one wonder that she does no
better. In portraying love-scenes she is unsurpassed: she is graceful
and beautiful, has studied her parts thoroughly, has a sweet,
penetrating voice, and seems herself to feel the sentiments she would
convey to others. Her enunciation is remarkably distinct, and she has
the power of mingling more or less pathos with the tones to express
sorrow in greater or less degree: in one scene, where she thinks that
Romeo has been murdered, her cheeks are wet with actual tears. At the
close of the ball, when she learns that the fascinating young pilgrim is
a Montague, the hereditary enemy of her house, she gives her first touch
of pathos to the words--

My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!

But it is a pathos entirely different from that which later tinges her
sad good-night to her mother and nurse when she has determined to
counterfeit death:

Farewell!--God knows when we shall meet again.

Miss Neilson also possesses, in an eminent degree, the power to portray
that sly humor without malice known as _archness_. In the earlier phases
of Juliet's career, and throughout the whole impersonation of Rosalind
in _As You Like It_, this accomplishment stands the actress in good
stead: she undoubtedly owes to it much of her power to charm. It strikes
one when she first comes on the stage as Juliet and gently checks the
garrulous old Nurse, taking up the thread of the discourse--

And stint thou too, I pray thee, nurse, say I

again, in her witty word-fencing with the mock palmer at the ball--

For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,