ve not yet heard; but his antagonist in a few years afterwards died
in one of the principal posts of the Government."

There were no more such scenes after Santlow became Mrs. Barton Booth.
Everything was respectability, and the voice of the turtle-dove
appears to have been heard in the home of the happy couple. Yea, the
husband waxed ecstatic after several years of married bliss, once more
tuned his lyre, and burst forth into verses, wherein he set forth,
among other things:

"Happy the hour when first our souls were joined!
The social virtues and the cheerful mind
Have ever crowned our days, beguiled our pain;
Strangers to discord and her clamorous train," &c.

The lines suggest placidity of existence, and placid, indeed, was the
married life of Booth, barring his moments of ill-health. When his
career is compared to that of certain other players, it stands out in
rather pleasant relief, by virtue of its even tenor and prosperity. It
was free from the vicissitudes which have waylaid the paths of equally
great artists, and the current of his genius ran on without a ripple,
save that of sickness. There was one direction, however, wherein Booth
found variety and excitement, and that was in the wondrous diversity
of parts which he assumed. In tragedy, his work took a wide range,
going all the way from Laertes to Othello, while he sallied forth now
and again into the field of comedy, and emerged therefrom with honour.
He did not, to be sure, distinguish himself so brilliantly as a
comedian as he did in tragic garb, yet he wooed Thalia in a genteel
way which seldom failed to please. Nay, it is chronicled that he
impersonated capon-lined Falstaff in a fashion that amused even
phlegmatic Queen Anne. But the actor of long ago thought nothing of
such catholicity in art. He often worked like a horse, that he might
later play like a god.[A]

[Footnote A: To show the versatility of Booth it need only be
mentioned that his parts (among many not herein named) included the
Ghost, Laertes, Horatio and the Prince in "Hamlet," Dick in "The
Confederacy," Captain Worthy in the "Fair Quaker of Deal," Pyrrhus,
Cato, Young Bevil in the "Conscious Lovers," Tamerlane, Oronooko,
Jaffier, Othello, King Lear, Hotspur, Wildair, Sir Charles Easy,
Falstaff, Cassio, Macbeth, Banquo, Lennox, Henry VIII. and Cinna. Few
living players can match such a repertoire.]

Perhaps the most annoying disturbance which ever came into Booth's
theatri