we detect the mind that is continually turned to death. He died at Goring, worn out with many ailments, on the 14th of August 1887. The best-known books of Richard Jefferies are: _The Gamekeeper at Home_ (1878); _The Story of My Heart_ (1883); _Life of the Fields_ (1884), containing the best paper he ever wrote, "The Pageant of Summer"; _Amaryllis at the Fair_ (1884), in which may be found the portraits of his own people; and _The Open Air_. He stands among the scanty company of men who address a small audience, for whom he read aloud these pages of Nature spoken of above, which only he, and the few like unto him, can decipher. See Sir Walter Besant, _Eulogy of Richard Jefferies_ (1888); H. S. Salt, _Richard Jefferies: a Study_ (1894); Edward Thomas, _Richard Jefferies, his Life and Work_ (1909). (W. Be.) JEFFERSON, JOSEPH (1820-1905), American actor, was born in Philadelphia on the 20th of February 1829. He was the third actor of this name in a family of actors and managers, and the most famous of all American comedians. At the age of three he appeared as the boy in Kotzebue's _Pizarro_, and throughout his youth he underwent all the hardships connected with theatrical touring in those early days. After a miscellaneous experience, partly as actor, partly as manager, he won his first pronounced success in 1858 as Asa Trenchard in Tom Taylor's _Our American Cousin_ at Laura Keene's theatre in New York. This play was the turning-point of his career, as it was of Sothern's. The naturalness and spontaneity of humour with which he acted the love scenes revealed a spirit in comedy new to his contemporaries, long used to a more artificial convention; and the touch of pathos which the part required revealed no less to the actor an unexpected power in himself. Other early parts were Newman Noggs in _Nicholas Nickleby_, Caleb Plummer in _The Cricket on the Hearth_, Dr Pangloss in _The Heir at Law_, Salem Scudder in _The Octoroon_, and Bob Acres in _The Rivals_, the last being not so much an interpretation of the character as Sheridan sketched it as a creation of the actor's. In 1859 Jefferson made a dramatic version of the story of _Rip Van Winkle_ on the basis of older plays, and acted it with success at Washington. The play was given its permanent form by Dion Boucicault in London, where (1865) it ran 170 nights, with Jefferson in the leading part. Jefferson continued to act with undiminished popularity in a limited number of parts in nearly every town in the United States, his Rip Van Winkle, Bob Acres, and Caleb Plummer being the most popular. He was one of the first to establish the travelling combinations which superseded the old system of local stock companies. With the exception of minor parts, such as the First Gravedigger in _Hamlet_, which he played in an "all star combination" headed by Edwin Booth, Jefferson created no new character after 1865; and the success of Rip Van Winkle was so pronounced that he has often