impulses; wayward in fancy, strange and erratic, yet lovely with simplicity; and always, at last--surviving every vicissitude--the authentic image of goodness and truth. Not improbably the actress believes that she has carefully and deftly reasoned her way to every effect of inspiration that she produced in the mad scene of Ophelia, in Margaret's ecstasy of love, and in Olivia's unspeakably pathetic surrender; but such effects as those are not planned, they happen; like some of Shakespeare's own happiest lines, they rise out of 'Thought's interior sphere' (as Emerson calls it), and they leap, full-statured, into an immortality of beauty. Her embodiments of Beatrice and Portia were more the creatures of design, yet into them also the unpremeditated allurement of her enchanting womanhood found its way, and the wild heart of Beatrice evoked a tender sympathy, and the moral grandeur of Portia--warmed with human passion--entranced the feelings as much as it impressed the mind. Portia, on the stage, had always been didactic and oratorical until Miss Ellen Terry played the part, liberating all its piquant sweetness, alluring loveliness, and passionate ardour; since which time it has been acted as a lover, not as a preacher. More to her than to any one else the stage of to-day owes the benefits accruing from the growth of a natural style in acting--a style which yet does not sacrifice the ideal, nor degrade poetry to the level of prose. This style has been caught up and imitated in every direction--a thing, however intrinsically desirable, that never would have happened but for the magical achievement of her personality, affecting actors no less than auditors, and making her--to use a line from an old poet--'Mistress of Arts, and Hearts, and Everything.' This view might be enforced by particular examination of each of Miss Terry's representative embodiments, but that process--which would require a volume--is impracticable here. Her acting is, of course, irregular and uneven--the under-woods, full of bramble-roses, not the trim garden, with its rows of tulips and beds of moss, but it is all the more potent for that reason. Her first performance in America (October 30, 1883) was that of Queen Henrietta Maria, in Wills' beautiful play of 'Charles I.,' and the dominion that she then established over the public mind in this country has ever since remained unbroken. Her later visits to America were made in 1884, 1886--when she came as a traveller, not to act-1887, 1893, 1895, and 1899; and now, as these words are written--in fervent admiration of rare genius consistently and continually devoted to great subjects and the welfare of society as affected by the arts--she is once more speeding to these shores,