Latterly she has become a hard mannerist. Her face, once so flexible, has lost the power of expressing the nicer shades and softer gradations of feeling; so much so, that they write dramas for her with supernaturally wicked and depraved heroines to suit her especial powers. I conceive that an artist could not sink lower in degradation. Yet to satisfy the taste of a Parisian audience and the ambition of a Parisian actress this was not enough, and wickedness required the piquancy of immediate approximation with innocence. In the Valeria she played two characters, and appeared on the stage alternately as a miracle of vice and a miracle of virtue: an abandoned prostitute and a chaste matron. There was something in this contrasted impersonation, considered simply in relation to the aims and objects of art, so revolting, that I sat in silent and deep disgust, which was partly deserved by the audience which could endure the exhibition. It is the entire absence of the high poetic and moral element which distinguishes Rachel as an actress, and places her at such an immeasurable distance from Mrs. Siddons, that it shocks me to hear them named together. 112. It is no reproach to a capital actress to play effectively a very wicked character. Mrs. Siddons played the abandoned Milwood as carefully, as completely as she played Hermoine and Constance; but if it had required a perpetual succession of Calistas and Milwoods to call forth her highest powers, what should we think of the woman and the artist? 113. When dramas and characters are invented to suit the particular talent of a particular actor or actress, it argues rather a limited range of the artistic power; though within that limit the power may be great and the talent genuine. Thus for Liston and for Miss O’Neil, so distinguished in their respective lines of Comedy and Tragedy, characters were especially constructed and plays written, which have not been acted since their time. 114. A celebrated German actress (who has quitted the stage for many years) speaking of Rachel, said that the reason she must always stop short of the highest place in art, is because she is nothing but an actress—that only; and has no aims in life, has no duties, feelings, employments, sympathies, but those which centre in herself in the interests of her art;—which thus ceases to be _art_ and becomes a _métier_. This reminded me of what Pauline Viardot once said to me:—“D’abord je suis _femme_, avec les dévoirs, les affections, les sentiments d’une femme; et puis je suis _artiste_.” 115.