Furthermore, an important circle of his most honored friends fell away from Forrest under circumstances peculiarly trying to his feelings. All those who in the time of his domestic unhappiness and the consequent lawsuits sympathized with the lady and supported her cause against him he regarded as having committed an unpardonable offence. He would never again speak with one of them. It was a heavy defection. It inflicted much suffering on him and bred a bitter sense of hostility towards them, with a sad feeling of impoverishment. For the places they had occupied in his heart and memory were thenceforth as so many closed and sealed chambers of funereal gloom. But, after all the foregoing failures have been allowed for, there remain in the life we are contemplating a goodly number of friendships full of hearty sincerity and wholesome human helpfulness and joy,— friendships unstained by vice, unbroken by quarrels, undestroyed by years. Several of these have already been alluded to; especially the supreme example in his opening manhood, his relations with the eloquent, heroic, and generous William Leggett. Some account also has been given of his endeared intimacy with James Lawson, who first greeted him on the night of his first appearance in New York, and whose faithful attachment to his person and interests grew closer and stronger to the day of his death, never for an instant having seen the prospect of a breach or known the shadow of a passing cloud. “My friend Lawson,” said Forrest, when near his end, “is a gentleman on whom, as Duncan remarked of the thane of Cawdor, I have always built an absolute trust. He has, in our long communion of nigh fifty years, never failed me in a single point nor deceived me by so much as a look, but has been as good and kind to me as man can be to man.” Here is one of his letters: “PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 1, 1869. “DEAR LAWSON,—I am glad you like the notice of _Spartacus_. It was written by our friend Forney, in his hearty and friendly spirit. “My dear friend Lawson, it is not money that I play for now, but the excitement of the stage keeps me from rusting physically and mentally. It drives away the canker care, and averts the progress of decay. It is wholesome to be employed in ‘the labor we delight in.’ What prolonged the life of Izaak Walton, but his useful employments, which gave vigor to his mind and body, until mildly drew on the slow necessity of death? I hope to take you by the hand when you are ninety, and tell some merry tales of times long past. Day after to- morrow I leave home for Cincinnati, and shall be absent in the West for several months, and return with the birds and the buds, to see you once more, I hope, in your usual enjoyment of health and happiness. God bless you. “Your sincere friend, “EDWIN FORREST.”