beneath their gloves, a perception of the marks of the moulds caused all the heroic grandeur of the images to go for nothing. It is necessary to bear in mind these six classes of critics in order justly to understand the career of Forrest as an actor with the extraordinary amount of depreciation, invective, and ridicule he encountered as an offset to his surpassing popular success. For before the cliques of critics spoke, while they were speaking, and after they had spoken, unaffected by anything they said, the general average of theatre-goers were played upon in their manliest sympathies by him as by no other actor of his time, and the great mass of the people followed him with their loving admiration and praise like a flood. And in such matters as this, we may be well assured, the permanent judgment of the multitude is never grandly wrong, however pettily right the opinion of the opposing few may be. January 8th, 1834, Forrest wrote to Henry Hart, officer of a literary society in Albany, the following eminently characteristic letter. The period of critical transition from youth to manhood which he spent in Albany had left lingering recollections of interest and gratitude in him which he gladly availed himself of this opportunity to express in an act of public spirit. "SIR,--The laudable zeal you have evinced in forming of the Young Men of Albany, without regard to individual condition, an Association for Mutual Improvement, is alike creditable to the heads that projected and the hearts that resolved it. In a country like ours, where all men are free and equal, no aristocracy should be tolerated, save that aristocracy of superior mind, before which none need be ashamed to bow. Young men of all occupations will now have a place stored with useful knowledge where at their leisure they may assemble for mutual instruction and the free interchange of sentiment. A taste for American letters should be carefully disseminated among them, and the parasitical opinion cannot be too soon exploded which teaches that 'nothing can be so good as that which emanates from abroad.' Our literature should be independent; and with a hearty wish that the fetters of prejudice which surround it may soon be broken, I enclose the sum of one hundred dollars to be appropriated to the purchase of _books purely American_, to be placed in the library for the use of the young men of Albany." To this letter an interesting reply was written by the president of the Association, Amos Dean: