The best attempt _we_ have been able to make, is printed on the opposite page. Truth to say, a good portrait, such as one may bind up with one's copy of Racine, is the only tolerable criticism after all. So, gentle reader, there is Rachel for you: and to flatter your national likings, if you have any, she is in the dress of Mary Stuart, though the woes of Mary Stuart are not in Racine. Quiet, earnest, intense, with a look of passion that has its spring in tenderness, that is just the expression she should wear. It pervaded all her performances, because in all of them she was the Woman. There it was, as you see it, when she said for this unhappy _Mary_ that she was ready to go to death, for that all which could bind her to the earth had passed away; and as she said it, there came with its choking denial to her heart a sense of the still living capacity for joy or grief about to be quenched for ever. She wore that look, when, in _Camille_, she recalled the transient and deceitful dream wherein everything had spoken of her lover, and whispered happy issue to her love. It spread its mournful radiance over her face, when, for the wronged and deserted _Hermione_, she told the betrayer that she had loved him in his inconstancy, and with what something surpassing love would she have rewarded his fidelity. Je t'aimais inconstant; qu'aurais-je fait fidèle! Exquisitely perfect, let us say, was that performance of Hermione. Sometimes, it will not be heretical to whisper, her genius nodded or even slept: never here. The _Roxane_ would not suffer her to do justice to her finest qualities: in the _Emilie_ (for she was wilful) she refused herself that justice: in the _Marie Stuart_ she was unequal: in _Camille_, always great undoubtedly, she had yet a very limited range: but in _Hermione_, she achieved a triumph of high and finished art, which will never fade from the recollections of those who witnessed it. It occurs to us, as we write, that it was in this very _Hermione_ the famous Mademoiselle de Champmelé won the heart of Racine himself, who, after the performance, flung himself at her feet in a transport of gratitude, which soon merged into love. Luckless Rachel, that Champmelé should have been beforehand with her. How the poet would have shaken out love and gratitude upon _her_, from every curl of his full-bottomed peruke!