A curious fact in connection with the Banquo of Betterton's time may here be noted. Banquo was represented by an actor named Smith; the ghost, however, was personated by another actor--Sandford. Why this division of the part between two performers? Smith was possessed of a handsome face and form, whereas Sandford was of "a low and crooked figure." He was the stage villain of his time, and was famed for his uncomely and malignant aspect; "the Spagnolet of the stage," Cibber calls him; but it is certainly strange that he should therefore have enjoyed a prescriptive right to impersonate ghosts. The attempted omission of Banquo's ghost, however, made it clear that the old substantial shade emerging from a trap-door in the stage had ceased to satisfy the town. Something more was required. The public were becoming critical about their ghosts. Credit could not be given to the spirits of the theatre if they exceeded a certain consistency. There was a demand for something vaporous and unearthly, gliding, transparent, mysterious. Scenic illusion was acquiring an artistic quality. The old homely simple processes of the theatre were exploded. The audience would only be deceived upon certain terms. Mr. Boaden, adapting Ann Radcliffe's "Romance of the Forest" to the stage of Covent Garden Theatre, records the anxiety he felt about the proper presentment of its supernatural incidents. The contrivance he hit upon has since become one of the commonplaces of theatrical illusion. It was arranged that the spectre should be seen through a bluish-gray gauze, so as to remove the too corporeal effect of a live actor, and convert the moving substance into a gliding essence.