From this point onward to the close all was moulded and wrought up in perfect keeping. He had fashioned to himself a complete image of what Rolla should be in accordance with the conception in the play, his carriage, walk, and attitudes, his style of gesture, his physiognomy, his tone and habit of voice. He had imprinted this idea so deeply in his brain, and had trained himself so carefully to its consistent manifestation, that his portrayal on the stage had all the unity of design and precision of detail which characterize the work of a masterly painter. Instead of using canvas, pigment, and brush, he painted his part in the air in living pantomime. In all his rôles this was his manner more and more up to the crowning period of his career. He gave extraordinary effectiveness to the famous address which Rolla pronounces to the Peruvian warriors on the eve of battle, by the manly truth and simplicity of his delivery,--"My brave associates, partners of my toil, my feelings, and my fame." Instead of launching forth in a swollen and mechanical declamation, he spoke with the straightforward truth and the varied and hearty inflection of nature; and his honest earnestness woke responsive echoes in every breast. Like Macklin and Garrick on the English stage, Talma on the French, and Devrient on the German, Forrest on the American was a bold and original innovator on the inveterate elocutionary mannerism of actors embodied in what is universally known as theatrical delivery. For the mouthing formality, the torpid noisiness, the strained monotony and forced cadences of the routine players, these men of genius substituted--only enlarging the scale of power--the abruptness, the changes, the conversational vivacity of tone, emphasis, and inflection, which are natural to a free man with a free voice played upon by the genuine passions of life. This was one of the chief excellences and attractions of Forrest throughout his professional course. He was ever a man uttering thoughts and sentiments,--not an elocutionist displaying his trade.