As to the last scene of Adrienne Lecouvreur, (which those who are _avides de sensation_, athirst for painful emotion, go to see as they would drink a dram, and critics laud as a miracle of art,) it is altogether a mistake and a failure; it is beyond the just limits of terror and pity—beyond the legitimate sphere of _art_. It reminds us of the story of Gentil Bellini and the Sultan. The Sultan much admired Bellini’s picture of the decollation of John the Baptist, but informed him that it was inaccurate—surgically—for the tendons and muscles ought to shrink where divided; and then calling for one of his slaves, he drew his scimitar, and striking off the head of the wretch, gave the horror-struck artist a lesson in practical anatomy. So we might possibly learn from Rachel’s imitative representation, (studied in an hospital as they say,) how poison acts on the frame, and how the limbs and features writhe into death; but if she were a great moral artist she would feel that what is allowed to be true in painting, is true in art generally; that mere imitation, such as the vulgar delight in, and hold up their hands to see, is the vulgarest and easiest aim of the imitative arts, and that between the true interpretation of poetry in art and such base mechanical means to the lowest ends, there lies an immeasurable distance. I am disposed to think that Rachel has not genius, but talent, and that her talent, from what I see year after year, has a downward tendency,—there is not sufficient moral seasoning to save it from corruption. I remember that when I first saw her in Hermione she reminded me of a serpent, and the same impression continues. The long meagre form with its graceful undulating movements, the long narrow face and features, the contracted jaw, the high brow, the brilliant supernatural eyes which seem to glance every way at once; the sinister smile; the painted red lips, which look as though they had lapped, or could lap, blood; all these bring before me the idea of a Lamia, the serpent nature in the woman’s form. In Lydia, and in Athalie, she touches the extremes of vice and wickedness with such a masterly lightness and precision, that I am full of wondering admiration for the actress. There is not a turn of her figure, not an expression in her face, not a fold in her gorgeous drapery, that is not a study; but withal such a consciousness of her art, and such an ostentation of the means she employs, that the power remains always _extraneous_, as it were, and exciting only to the senses and the intellect.