LONGFELLOW has commemorated in a beautiful sonnet the delightful evenings of Mrs. Kemble's readings; and certainly it was a singular pleasure to see and to hear her. Her historic name associated her with her uncle John and her aunt Mrs. Siddons, and she had always the port of one conscious of a famous lineage. She used to say, with a half-humorous, half-proud emphasis, that she belonged to her majesty's players, and in her presence it was easy to believe that her majesty's players were an important body in the state. Her power of identification with the various characters in the plays, and the skill with which she maintained the individuality throughout, were always remarkable, and the symmetry and completeness of the whole performance left nothing to be criticised. The only observation that suggested itself might be that the stage traditions were evident in her rendering. But that, in turn, only suggested the further question whether the traditions were not worthy of respect. Dramatic and histrionic forms of art, like all others, are but representations of nature under certain conditions and limitations. They are not an imitation, a fac-simile, and every man will be at odds with any work of art in any kind who does not bear this in mind. The spectator complains of unnaturalness upon the stage; the substance of his feeling is that people do not talk and act so in ordinary life. That is true; but if the theatre should show us men and women doing upon the stage what they do in ordinary life, the theatre would be no more attractive than the street or the parlor. It is not the spectacle of ordinary life that we expect to see in the theatre. It is a view of human life and nature under ideal conditions, and it is as irrelevant to require that the player shall seem to us like the man with whom we have been transacting business as that he should speak plain prose instead of blank verse. If Mrs. Kemble had read the words of Rosalind or of Portia, of Shylock or Mercutio, as if they were neighbors of hers and people whom we were in the habit of meeting, the effect would have been ludicrous. When she came in--the Fanny Kemble of Talfourd and of the wild enthusiasm of the grandfathers of to-day, ripened into the comely and queenly woman--and seated herself at the little table on which the great volume lay open, she was the magician who was to open to us the realm of faery, the world of imagination, not to take us back into the familiar scenes of the world of New York or Chicago. The spell was resistless. The deep, rich, melodious voice flowed out like an enchanted singing river, along which we glided seeing visions and dreaming dreams. To sit and listen to her was like sitting and watching Titian laying on the canvas the gorgeous tints which before our eyes took on the forms of men and angels. A rarer, a more refined delight, which of us has known? Did it ever occur to us that Mrs. Kemble was doing anything improper,