Since that night when she first played Portia, it has never lost its hold upon the public, or its influence upon our stage. With an equally magnetic Shylock the Bancrofts' brave venture with "The Merchant of Venice" would surely have run for many months, and in view of the deep impression she has made, it must have been a great disappointment to Ellen Terry that this was not to be. She did not know then that both in England and America her Portia would prove an ever-recurring joy. It was ordained that as Ophelia she should commence her long and brilliant series of Shakespearean impersonations with Henry Irving at the Lyceum, but it was as Portia at the Bancrofts' Prince of Wales' Theatre that she first won all our hearts, from the scholarly critic of our greatest poet, to those who only regard "The Merchant of Venice" as an interesting play that they pay their money to see. Portia will, I think, ever sparkle as the brightest gem in her well bejewelled crown. Being human, Ellen Terry must have felt somewhat chagrined that the fiasco of Charles Coghlan's Shylock should, for a time, banish her Portia, and it is characteristic of her generous nature that a few months later she should be playing, for a single performance, Pauline Deschappelles to his Claude Melnotte at the Princess's Theatre. It was one of those ephemeral stage experiments that could lead to no immediate good. It involved much study, great anxiety, and hard work. Probably in undertaking the task Ellen Terry was actuated by the unselfish desire to help to reinstate her old comrade of the Bristol days in the public estimation. I know that in the long period of her unalterably established fame she has ever been the first to help a fellow actor fallen by the way. If this was her desire she succeeded beyond her expectations. As Claude Melnotte Coghlan did much to redeem his recent unfortunate venture, and as Pauline she evoked pæans of praise. Writing of this performance Joseph Knight said that its effect was to set the seal upon a growing reputation, and to make evident the fact that an actress of a high, if not the highest, order had arisen in our midst. He felt, as every one felt, that in Ellen Terry an artist had developed in whom there was that perception of analogies, that insight into mysteries, and that power of interpretation on which the world has bestowed the name of genius. "Circumstances," he truly remarked, "took Miss Terry from the stage at a time when men dimly perceived in her the promise which has since been realised. It is probable that some delay in that maturity of style indispensable to perfection in histrionic art has resulted from this break in her career. The interval can scarcely have been misspent, however, since Miss Terry reappeared on the stage with ripened powers and with improved methods."