The actor lives in an atmosphere electrized with human publicity, and walks between walls lined with mirrors. Everything in his career is calculated to develop an acute self-consciousness. And then by what terrible trials his sensitiveness is beset in his exposure to the opposite extremes of derision and eulogy! Dr. Johnson, alluding at one time to the sensibility of Garrick, said, contemptuously, “Punch has no feelings.” At another time, praising his genius, he said, sublimely, “His death eclipsed the gayety of nations.” The actor tastes the sweetness of fame more keenly than any other, because no other lives so directly on it or draws the expression of it so openly and directly. Bannister was invited by the royal family at Windsor one evening to read a new play, and was treated with the utmost regard. The very next night he was stopped by a footpad, who, dragging him to a lamp to plunder him, discovered who he was, and said, “I’ll be damned if I can rob Jack Bannister.” Having thus the esteem of both extremes of society, it is safe to conclude that he enjoyed the admiration of all between. And this boon of public honor and love will seem valuable to a performer in proportion to the quickness and depth of his emotional power. “The awful consciousness,” said Mrs. Siddons, “that one is the sole object of attention to that immense space, lined as it were with human intellect all around from top to bottom, may perhaps be imagined, but can never be described.” A vulgar performer would rush on as if those heads were so many turnips. The genius of imaginative sensibility is the raw material for greatness. Forrest had much of this, although his self-possession was so strong; and under his composed exterior, even after he had been thirty years on the stage, he often shrank with temporary trepidation from the ordeal of facing a fresh audience. His enjoyment of the tributes paid to him was commensurately deep. And, stretching through the long fifty years of his professional course, how varied, how numerous, how interesting and precious, these crowded tributes were! There was no end to the compliments paid him, echoes of the impression he had made on the country. Now it was a peerless race- horse, carrying off prize on prize, that was named after him. Then it was some beautiful yacht, club-boat, or pilot-boat, of which there were a dozen or more to whose owners he presented sets of flags. At another time it was a noble steamer or merchantman, of which there were a good many named for him, each adorned with a statue of some one of his characters as a figure-head. Locomotives and fire-engines also were crowned with his name and his likeness. Military companies, too, took their titles from him and carried his face copied on their banners. The following letter indicates another of the results of his fame: “WALTHAM, February 12th, 1871. “EDWIN FORREST, ESQ.: