The fame of the admirable actor who played the leading character was then at its height; and John Kemble shared with his splendid sister the honour of being the twin leaders of the theatrical galaxy. I am not about to dwell on Shakspeare's conception of the magnificent republican, nor on the scarcely less magnificent representative which it found in the actor of the night. But I speak to a generation which have never seen either Siddons or Kemble, and will probably never see their equals. I may be suffered, too, to indulge my own admiration of forms and faculties which once gave me a higher sense of the beauty and the powers of which our being is capable. Is this a dream? or, if so, is it not a dream that tends to ennoble the spirit of man? The dimness and dulness of the passing world require relief, and I look for it in the world of recollections. Kemble was, at that time, in the prime of his powers; his features strongly resembling those of Siddons; and his form the perfection of manly grace and heroic beauty. His voice was his failing part; for it was hollow and interrupted; yet its tone was naturally sweet, and it could, at times, swell to the highest storm of passion. In later days he seemed to take a strange pride in feebleness, and, in his voice and his person, affected old age. But when I saw him first, he was all force, one of the handsomest of human beings, and, beyond all comparison, the most accomplished classic actor that ever realized the form and feelings of the classic age. His manners in private life completed his public charm; and, in seeing Kemble on the stage, we saw the grace and refinement acquired by the companionship of princes and nobles, the accomplished, the high-born, and the high-bred of the land. From the mingled tenderness and loftiness of Kemble's playing, a new idea of Coriolanus struck me. I had hitherto imagined him simply a bold patrician, aristocratically contemptuous of the multitude, indignant at public ingratitude, and taking a ruthless revenge. But the performance of the great actor on this night opened another and a finer view to me. Till now, I had seen the hero, a Roman, merely a gallant chieftain of the most unromantic of all commonwealths, the land of inflexibility, remorseless daring, and fierce devotement to public duty. But, by throwing the softer feelings of the character into light, Kemble made him less a Roman than a Greek--a loftier and purer Alcibiades, or a republican Alexander, or, most and truest of all, a Roman Achilles--the same dazzling valour, the same sudden affections, the same deep conviction of wrong, and the same generous, but unyielding, sense of superiority. Say what we will of the subordination of the actor to the author, the great actor shares his laurels. He, too, is a creator.