MY DEAR SIR--or let me at once break through the formalities of a first acquaintance, and say, dear Smith;--Dear Smith, I am delighted to have been at last introduced to a real member of the theatrical profession--a _bonâ fide_ flesh and blood, silk-stocking'd and tinsel-rapier'd "pride of Astley's stage." If you unite in your own person the artist and the player; if you occasionally handle the painter's brush as well as the field-marshal's truncheon--for have I not seen you lead the British troops with heroic valour through the awful passes of Cabul, which I had seen you creating with lamp-black and grey chalks in the morning?--it will only prove that your genius is universal, or, at least, not limited to one mode of development; but that, as D'Israeli is an orator and a statesman, you are a scene-painter and performer. But your qualities are not of so confined a nature even as this. For have I not seen you, in the intervals of your possessing the stage, employ your great strength in pushing forward the ponderous woods of Bondy you have painted? Have I not seen you dash off dungeon in the Castle of Udolpho with all the vigour of Rembrandt, roll it forward on the stage with the strength of Hercules, and then murder the turnkey in it with the power and elegance of Thurtell? But it is not the multifariousness of your merits that makes me proud of calling you my friend: no, it is the modesty with which you bear your honours thick upon you--the ignorance, as it were, of your own position, as compared with that of others infinitely your inferiors--that shows you at once the man of genius and the gentleman. Macready, you acknowledge, is perhaps your superior in such parts as Lear and Hamlet; but did he ever paint a single side-scene in his life? Beverley, they say, is equal to Stanfield in the poetry of his landscapes; and you confess that in his airs and distances he surpasses your noblest efforts. Ask yourself, my dear friend, if he ever fought a terrific combat with a sword in each hand, with such courage as I have seen you display in front of one of your own scenes? Ask him if he ever painted his mother's cottage in one character, pushed it forward in another, and poisoned her in it in a third? No, no, dear Smith, do not try to hide from yourself that there is no man your equal in so many different walks; that some may approach you in one branch and some in another; but that, in the combination of high qualifications, you are yourself your only parallel.