"MY DEAR MR. PEMBERTON,--Your story of Miss Ellen Terry's life, and your estimate of her acting, have not left anything for any one else to say, and yet your kind wish for a tribute from the present writer must not be denied. Observation on this subject has extended over a period of twenty-five years, and first impressions have only been deepened in the lapse of time. The actress is great, but the woman is greater than the actress, and in the final analysis of Miss Terry's acting, it will be found that her enchantment is that of a unique personality. Only to name the characters that she has made her own--the characters in which she is not only unrivalled but unapproachable--is to point directly to this conclusion. Those characters are Ophelia, Portia, Beatrice, Wills' Olivia, and Goethe's Margaret. She has played many other parts, and given great pleasure by the playing of them, and revealed rare qualities of nature and fine faculties of art: in each and every one of these, and in others of slighter fabric and narrower import, her acting has often afforded, if not invariably the ground for unqualified applause, at least the means of enjoyment and always the occasion of thoughtful study; but her revelation of personality, in a natural embodiment of ideal womanhood, has never been so ample as in those five characters just mentioned. She possesses a marvellously blithe spirit, and, in some of her moods, she revels in the exuberance of frivolous humour. With persons of extreme sensibility that trait--an almost hysterical propensity for mirth, as a relief to the strain of serious feeling--is not unusual; but ultimately, she is a woman of passionate heart, of profound tenderness, and of a most ardently poetic imagination. Nature has been more kind to her--more profuse in the liberality of good gifts--than to any other woman on the stage in our time; for it has endowed her with a commanding yet winsome figure; a stately head, mantled with golden hair; a countenance of piquant charm and exquisite mobility; the grey eyes of genius, through which a brave, pure and noble soul looks frankly into the face of all the world; vocal organs of exceptional power; a voice of delicious cadences and melting sweetness; symmetry of person and natural grace of action; and, within the external equipment it has placed a woman's heart to feel; a woman's unerring intuition to perceive; the gipsy's freedom of spirit, that breaks away from all convention; and the poet's kinship with nature, in everything that is grand and beautiful. Her acting has revealed her as more a spirit than a mind; as one who reaches conclusions instantly, by divination and not by analysis; as a wonderful, complex creature of nerves and