ost. Nor did she seek to tread, with her free,
unpractised step, the classic boards of Drury Lane,--where Garrick, the
_Grand Monarque_ of the Drama, though now toward the end of his reign,
ruled with jealous, despotic sway,--but modestly and quietly appeared at
a minor theatre, seeming, to such play-goers as remembered her brief,
brilliant career and sudden disappearance, like the Muse of Tragedy
returned from the shades.

She was kindly received, both for her own sake, and because of the
pleasant memories which the sight of her, pale, slender, and sad-eyed,
yet beautiful still, revived. Those who had once sworn by her swore by
her still, and were loath to admit even to themselves that her early
style of acting--easy, flowing, impulsive, the natural translation in
action of a strong and imaginative nature--must remain what, in the long
absence of the actress, it had become, a beautiful tradition of the
stage,--that her present personations were wanting in force and
spontaneity,--that they were efforts, rather than inspirations,--were
marked by a weary tension of thought,--were careful, but not composed,
roughened by unsteady strokes of genius, freshly furrowed with labor.

Mrs. Bury made a grave mistake in choosing for her second _debut_ her
great part of Juliet; for she had outlived the possibility of playing it
as she played it at that period of her life when her soul readily melted
in the divine glow of youthful passion and flowed into the character,
taking its perfect shape, rounded and smooth and fair. Through long
years of sorrow and unrest, she had now to toil back to that golden
time,--and there was a sort of sharpness and haggardness about her
acting, a singular tone of weariness, broken by starts and bursts of
almost preternatural power. Except in scenes and sentiments of pathos,
where she had lost nothing, the last, fine, evanishing tints, the
delicate aroma of the character, were wanting in her personation. It was
touched with autumnal shadows,--it was comparatively hard and dry, not
from any inartistic misapprehension of the poet's ideal, but because the
fountain of youth in Zelma's own soul ran low, and was choked by the
dead violets which once sweetened its waters.

She felt all this bitterly that night, ere the play was over; and though
her audience generously applauded and old friends congratulated her, she
never played Juliet again.

Yet, even in the darker and sterner parts, in which she was once