I have seen ----, who in his outward man bears but little token of his inward greatness. Miss ---- had prepared me for an exterior over which debility and sickness had triumphed now for some years; but, thought I, there must be eyes and a brow; and there the spirit will surely be seen upon its throne. But the eyes were small grey eyes, with an expression which struck me at first as more akin to shrewdness of judgment, than genius and the loftier qualities of the mind; and though the brow and forehead were those of an intellectual person, they had neither the expanse nor conformation I had imagined. The subject of our conversation, though sufficiently natural for him to choose, addressing one of my craft, did not appear to me to be a happy one for his own powers,--perhaps I thought so because I differed from him. He talked about the stage and acting in as unreal, and, in my opinion, mistaken, a manner as possible. Had he expressed himself unknowingly about acting, that would not have surprised me; for he can have no means of judging of it, not having frequented the theatre for some years past: and those who have the best means of forming critical judgments upon dramatic subjects for the most part talk arrant nonsense about them. Lawrence was the only man I ever heard speak about the stage who did so with understanding and accuracy. I have heard the very cleverest men in England talk the greatest stuff imaginable about actors and acting. But to return to ----: he said he had not thought much upon the subject, but that it appeared to him feasible and highly desirable to take detached passages and scenes from the finest dramatic writers, and have them well declaimed in comparatively private assemblies,--this as a wholesome substitute for the stage, of which he said he did not approve; and he thought this the best method of obtaining the intellectual pleasure and profit to be derived from fine dramatic works, without the illusion and excitement belonging to theatrical exhibitions. My horror was so unutterable at this proposition, and my amazement so extreme that he should make it, that I believe my replies to it were all but incoherent. What! take one of Shakspeare's plays bit by bit, break it piece-meal, in order to make recitals of it!--destroy the marvellous unity of one of his magnificent works, to make patches of declamation! If the stage is evil, put it away, and put away with it those writings which properly belong to it, and to nothing else; but do not take dramatic compositions, things full of present action and emotion, to turn them into recitations,--and mutilated ones too. Get other poems to declaim, no matter how vivid or impassioned in their descriptions, so their form be not dramatic. It is not to be supposed that the effect proper and natural to a fine dramatic conception can be preserved when the language is merely declaimed without the assistance of distance, dress, scenic