he temporarily eludes detection. He is entertained by the magistrate, and he recounts some of his adventures, not only to that functionary, but in the hearing of the girl whom his courage and skill have saved. The girl's fancy is taken by him, and it is evident that her liking might soon ripen into love. The two speak together, and the knave surprises the secret of the girl's heart. It is a crisp and pretty colloquy,-not a word being wasted, and the drift being steadily dramatic. The heart of the knave is touched, and he knows that he might find the happiness and peace of love. But this homeless wanderer is of the loftier type of man, and he will sacrifice himself rather than disgrace what he loves. Loss is sometimes better than gain. Failure may be greater and finer than success. He sees that this innocent girl is beloved by a youth of her own station, and with delicate artifice he will contrive their betrothal, and will pass gayly into the shadow of death. The play was a dramatic exposition, done with a free hand, of romantic self-sacrifice. The acting of Ada Rehan had not been more flexible at any time than it was in that character. She wore the masculine garb with ease, and as the temperament of such a lover as Mockworld would be feminine and very sweet and tender she readily assumed his nature. The embodiment was a lovely image of wild-wood freedom, elastic in demeanor, beautiful in visage and in speech, sweetly suffused with kindly cynicism, and showing the face of a sublime sor

row, radiant with the smile of that tender submission which is perfect triumph.

And that point contains the sum of thoughts that are prompted by the subject. It is a common opinion, and sometimes it finds expression, that any person who is self-possessed, and is able to deliver language in an effective manner, is, therefore, able to act. There could not be a greater delusion. Self-possession in the presence of an audience, which obviously is essential, comes by experience, but elocution will not make an actor. It is a useful and a charming accomplishment, but in the art of acting it is of secondary importance. The first qualification for an actor is the faculty of getting inside a character, giving to it a body and presenting it as a truth. Ada Rehan was excellent, even among the best, as a speaker of English, whether verse or prose; yet, though her elocution had been defective, her signal dramatic ability would have remained unimpaired. Just as, in a dramatic composition, the quality that makes it a play and not a narrative is a quality neither literary nor philosophical, neither analytical nor poetic, so in a dramatic performer the quality that makes the actor is neither scholarship, nor logic, nor eloquence, nor ingenuity, but a certain power of being something and doing something which converts words into actions and constructs before the eyes of the spectator a moving picture of human life, with its background of materialism and its atmosphere of

spiritual mystery. That power of being and doing is the soul of the Stage. Those persons who possess it, and those alone, touch the heart, arouse the imagination, and justify, and dignify, and advance the profession of the actor. In that large body of writing which is called dramatic criticism, and which has been created and copiously augmented by the futile literary industry of more than two hundred years, it is astonishing to observe how little thought the reader is able to discover that goes to the question of what the actor does and of how he does it. For one page about what Garrick actually did, in any one of Shakespeare's characters, the searcher can find a hundred about what Shakespeare possibly meant. For one writer like Cibber or Tom Davies, who tells much, he can find fifty like Tom Brown and Anthony Pasquin, who tell practically nothing; yet were it not for what the actor contributes,―investing with a body that soul which the author has conceived, the part of wisdom would be to stay at home and read the play in peace, at a comfortable fireside. It is that which makes certain men and women great in what otherwise would be an idle mimicry of serious and substantial things, and it is because they are great, in the possession and exercise of that power, that the study of their witchcraft is worthy of intellectual attention while it is at hand and worthy to be seized and commemorated, if possible, before it drifts away. In the presence of such women as Ellen Terry

and Ada Rehan,-representative actresses of England and America,-philosophers, statesmen, and poets dwindle into comparative insignificance in immediate popular interest. That may be strange, but it is true; and it would cease to be strange if the character, methods, and purpose of the dramatic faculty, together with the enchantment which invests a beautiful woman to whom nature has given it, were more intelligently studied and better understood.

IV.

DAVID WARFIELD.

1866-19-.

AMONG Contemporary actors one of the most conspicuous is David Warfield, a man of exceptional talent and respectable artistic achievement. An effort, manifestly absurd and injudicious, has been made to obtain recognition for him as being "another Joseph Jefferson": "Save us from our friends!" Joseph Jefferson was one of the greatest actors that ever lived,—a poetic genius and a consummate artist. His method was as fine as a silk thread and as firm as a strand of wrought steel. No deeper feeling, no more sensitive imagination, no finer, more delicate nature, has been manifested by any actor seen on our Stage in the last sixty years or recorded in the long annals of the Theatre. Mr. Warfield, as an actor, has shown a pleasant personality; an affable disposition; a gentle manner; sympathy with sweet, fine feeling; fervid emotion; capability of pathos; and a sure touch in the realm of domestic drama. The subjects which he has illustrated are, with one exception, homely reflections of common life. He has displayed force, not power, and of poetic feeling and