Finally, one more class of play-goers were continually censuring Forrest, casting blame even on his best portrayals. They had better grounds for their fault-finding than the others, and were partly justified in their verdicts, only unjust in their wilful exaggeration of his defects and ungenerous in their prejudiced denial of his conspicuous and imposing merits. Reference is now made to the select class of refined and scholarly minds, exquisitely cultivated in all directions, who insist that art is distinct from nature, being the purified and heightened reflection of nature through the mind at one remove from reality. Exuberance of power and sincerity was the primary greatness of Forrest as a tragedian. A small but most commanding portion of the public maintained that this too was the chief foible and limitation of his excellence, leading him to attempt on the stage a living resurrection of the crude truth of nature in place of that idealized softening and tempered reflex which is the genuine province of art. Shakspeare himself said that the end of playing was and is not to bring nature herself upon the stage, but to _hold the mirror up to nature_. The perfected artistic actor does not bring before his audience the reality itself of life with all its interclinging entanglements of passion and muscle, but he drops the repulsive details, all unessential vulgarities, refines and combines the chief features, harmonizing and heightening them in the process, and shows the result as a free picture, like the original in form and color and moving, but without its tearing ruggedness or expense of volition. This view is a true one, though not the adequate truth in its completeness. And this criticism is proper, though they who brought it against Forrest, in their intolerance, urged it beyond its fair application to him. It never was claimed that he was a perfect artist; it cannot be honestly denied that he was a great one. As a rule he did, no doubt, lack that last and most irresistible charm of genius, the easy curbing of expenditure which is the divine girdle of art. The bewitchment of the fairest of the goddesses lay in her cestus. The enchanting cestus of art is continence around strength. Human nature flung back on its elemental experiences in their extremest energy breaks loose from the finished forms and manners of polite society, and the conventional members of polite society are naturally displeased with the player who presents a specimen of this kind in its tempestuous truth not refined and tamed to their code. The great characters of Forrest were statues of their originals, recast in their native moulds in his imagination and heart, and placed directly on the stage in living action. The excrescences unremoved by the chisel and file did not lessen their truth or affect their sublimity. But in the eyes of dilettante critics who had no free intellect behind their glasses and no generous passions