In all ages successful actors have been an uncommonly well paid community. This is a substantial fact, which no one will deny, however opinions may differ as to the comparative value of the histrionic art, when ranked with poetry, painting, and sculpture. The actor complains of the peculiar condition attached to his most brilliant triumphs--that they fade with the decay of his own physical powers, and are only perpetuated for a doubtful interval through the medium of imperfect imitation--very often a bad copy of an original which no longer exists to disprove the libel. In the actor's case, then, something must certainly be deducted from posthumous renown; but this is amply balanced by living estimation and a realized fortune. There are many instances of great painters, poets, and sculptors (ay, and philosophers, too), who could scarcely gain a livelihood; but we should be puzzled to name a great actor without an enormous salary. I don't include managers in this category. They are unlucky exceptions, and very frequently lose in sovereignty what they had gained by service. An income of three or four thousand per annum, _argent comptant_, carries along with it many solid enjoyments. The actor who can command this, by laboring in his vocation, and whose ears are continually tingling with the nightly applause of his admirers, has no reason to consider his lot a hard one, because posterity may assign to him in the Temple of Fame a less prominent niche than is occupied by Milton, who, when alive, sold "Paradise Lost" for fifteen pounds, or by Rembrandt, who was obliged to feign his own death, before his pictures would provide him a dinner. If these instances fail to content him, he should recollect what is recorded of "Blind Mæonides: "Seven Grecian cities claim'd great Homer dead, Through which the living Homer begg'd his bread."