ment of bearing
it.

At the Sadler's Wells theatre I saw a play which I had much admired in
reading it, but found still better in actual representation; indeed,
it seems to me there can be no better acting play: this is "The
Patrician's Daughter," by J.W. Marston. The movement is rapid, yet
clear and free; the dialogue natural, dignified, and flowing; the
characters marked with few, but distinct strokes. Where the tone
of discourse rises with manly sentiment or passion, the audience
applauded with bursts of generous feeling that gave me great pleasure,
for this play is one that, in its scope and meaning, marks the new era
in England; it is full of an experience which is inevitable to a man
of talent there, and is harbinger of the day when the noblest commoner
shall be the only noble possible in England.

But how different all this acting to what I find in France! Here the
theatre is living; you see something really good, and good throughout.
Not one touch of that stage strut and vulgar bombast of tone, which
the English actor fancies indispensable to scenic illusion, is
tolerated here. For the first time in my life I saw something
represented in a style uniformly good, and should have found
sufficient proof, if I had needed any, that all men will prefer what
is good to what is bad, if only a fair opportunity for choice
be allowed. When I came here, my first thought was to go and see
Mademoiselle Rachel. I was sure that in her I should find a true
genius, absolutely the diamond, and so it proved. I went to see her
seven or eight times, always in parts that required great force of
soul and purity of taste even to conceive them, and only once had
reason to find fault with her. On one single occasion I saw her
violate the harmony of the character to produce effect at a particular
moment; but almost invariably I found her a true artist, worthy
Greece, and worthy at many moments to have her conceptions
immortalized in marble.

Her range even in high tragedy is limited. She can only express the
darker passions, and grief in its most desolate aspects. Nature has
not gifted her with those softer and more flowery attributes that lend
to pathos its utmost tenderness. She does not melt to tears, or calm
or elevate the heart by the presence of that tragic beauty that needs
all the assaults of Fate to make it show its immortal sweetness. Her
noblest aspect is when sometimes she expresses truth in some severe
shape, and rises, si