In the opening attraction of the next Lyceum season, which commenced in the January of 1882, Ellen Terry did not appear. This was a revival of "The Two Roses," for by this time playgoers were anxious to resume acquaintance with Henry Irving in his first great original character, that of Digby Grant. In Lyceum history the occasion is noteworthy, for it introduced to its boards--as the blind Caleb Deecie--George Alexander. Alexander had been touring in the country under the management of the younger Robertson, and those who took the trouble to watch him with discriminating eye had predicted for him a brilliant future. So admirable was he in a character part in a humorous piece called "The Guv'nor," that his name, extolled by discerning provincial critics, reached Irving's ears, and thus he won his first engagement in London. His admirable work at the Lyceum Theatre, before he went into management on his own account, and by his tact, taste, and personality once more made the St. James's (a playhouse which since the departure of John Hare and the Kendals had been allowed to droop) the resort of intellectual as well as fashionable London, is well remembered. It is a grand thing for a young and then comparatively unknown actor to reflect that, with infinite credit to himself, and to the great satisfaction of the public, he played such vitally important parts as Faust to the Margaret of Ellen Terry, and Macduff to the Macbeth of Henry Irving. But the great production of this season was "Romeo and Juliet." Never, probably, was a Shakespearean play so superbly mounted. All the resources of art were lavished upon it, and cost was apparently outside consideration. The result was a series of stage pictures that were absolutely entrancing. If I were writing a history of the Lyceum under the management of Henry Irving I should gladly dwell on these things, and on the work that he, both as manager and actor, put into them, but I must remember that my text is Ellen Terry, and, save for the all-important part which she took in them, pass them briefly by. Other writers have vividly described these matchless representations in their entirety, and I must content myself with a fragment here and there. My canvas is a small one, and my picture must be that of my heroine. If my accounts of the Lyceum revivals are brief it is not from lack of appreciation of them, and happily the memory of them is green. So it is with the later impersonations of Ellen Terry, and they will require no lengthy record at my hands.