ly a convert. He
maintains that if an actor should really show a character in such light
that we could not tell the impersonation from the reality, the stage
would lose its interest. I do not think so. We should draw back, of
course, from physical suffering; but yet we should be charmed to suppose
anything real, which we had desired to see. If we felt that we really
met Cardinal Wolsey or Henry VIII. in his days of glory, would it not be
a lifelong memory to us, very different from the effect of the stage,
and if for a few moments we really _felt_ that we had met them, would it
not lift us into a new kind of being?

"What would we not give to see Julius Caesar and the soothsayer, just as
they stood in Rome as Shakspere represents them? Why, we travel hundreds
of miles to see the places noted for the doings of these old Romans; and
if we could be made to believe that we met one of the smaller men, even,
of that day, our ecstasy would be unbounded. 'A tin pan so painted as to
deceive is atrocious,' says this writer. Of course, for we are not
interested in a tin pan; but give us a portrait of Shakspere or Milton
so that we shall feel that we have met them, and I see no atrocity in
the matter. We honor the homes of these men, and we joy in the hope of
seeing them. What would be beyond seeing them in life?

"October 31. I saw Rachel in 'Phedre' and in 'Adrienne.' I had
previously asked a friend if I, in my ignorance of acting, and in my
inability to tell good from poor, should really perceive a marked
difference between Rachel and her aids. She thought I should. I did
indeed! In 'Phedre,' which I first saw, she was not aided at all by her
troupe; they were evidently ill at ease in the Greek dress and in Greek
manners; while she had assimilated herself to the whole. It is founded
on the play of Euripides, and even to Rachel the passion which she
represents as Phedre must have been too strange to be natural.
Hippolytus refuses the love which Phedre offers after a long struggle
with herself, and this gives cause for the violent bursts in which
Rachel shows her power. It was an outburst of passion of which I have no
conception, and I felt as if I saw a new order of being; not a woman,
but a personified passion. The vehemence and strength were wonderful. It
was in parts very touching. There was as fine an opportunity for Aricia
to show some power as for Phedre, but the automaton who represented
Aricia had no power to show. Oenon