careers like those of Columbus and Galileo. Certainly the realization of such a vision is a great desideratum; because the theatre is a sort of universal Church of Humanity, where good and evil are shown in their true colors without formalism or cant. Its influence—unlike that of sectarian enclosures—is to draw all its attendants together in common sympathies towards the good and fair, and in common antipathies for the foul and cruel. Men are more open and generous in their pleasures than in their pains. Places of public amusement are the first to vibrate to the notes of public joy or grief, defeat or triumph. Telegrams announcing victories or calamities are read from the stage. Theatres are sure to be decked on great festival or pageant days, the popular pulse beating strongest there. The taste for dramatic representations is native and ineradicable in man. It is a fixed passion with man to love to see the passions of men exhibited in plot and action, and to watch the mutual workings of characters on one another through their different manners of behavior. Just now, it is true, the great, complex, terribly exciting and exacting drama of real life, revealed to us in the newspaper and the novel and the telegraph, so fastens and drains our sympathies that we lack the ideal freedom and restful leisure to enjoy the stage drama so eagerly as it was enjoyed at an earlier and simpler time. But this will not always be so;— “The world will grow a less distracting scene, And life, less busy, wear a gentler mien.” Forrest looked for a revival, at no remote date, in America and Europe, of the ancient Greek pride and joy in athletic exercises and the development of nude strength and beauty. The reflex influence from such a revival, he imagined, would flood the stage with a new lustre, making it a resplendent and exalted centre for the inspiring exposure to the public of the perfected models of every form of human excellence. Then the gymnasium, the circus, the race-course, dance, music, song, and the intellectual emulations of the academy may all be grouped around the theatre and find their dazzling climax in the scenic drama, made religious once more as it was in the palmiest day of Greece. CHAPTER XVII. OUTER AND INNER LIFE OF THE MAN. The external life of Forrest from the close of his first engagement after the divorce trial to the year 1869—the period stretching from his forty-sixth to his sixty-third year—was largely but the continual repetition of his old triumphs, varied now and then with some fresh professional glory or new personal adventure. To recite the details of his travels and theatrical experiences would be to make a monotonous record of popular successes without any important significance or general interest. A brief sketch of the leading incidents of this period is all that the reader will care to have.