He has collected the best Shakspearean library in America. He studies acting with an earnest and single-hearted devotion worthy of all honor, worthy also of professional emulation. Every one of his personations bears the marks of elaborate thought. According to the measure of his abilities, Mr. Forrest is a true and faithful artist; and if, as seems to us, the divine spark be wanting to animate and glorify his creations, that lack, unhappily, is one that nearly all artists endure, and one that not all the world can supply.” And now it is left to show more clearly and fully, while doing justice to what Forrest was in his own noble School of Nature, how he fell short in that other School of Art which is the finest and greatest of all. The voice of Forrest, naturally deep, rich, and strong, and developed by constant exercise until it became astonishingly full and powerful, ministered largely to the delight of his audiences and was a theme of unfailing wonder and eulogy to his admirers. It may not be said which is the most important weapon of the actor, the chest and neck, the arm and hand, the face and head, or the voice; because they depend on and contribute to one another, and each in its turn may be made the most potent of the agents of expression. But if the primacy be assigned to any organ it must be to the central and royal faculty of voice, since this is the most varied and complex and intellectual of all the channels of thought and emotion. A perfected voice can reveal almost everything which human nature is capable of thinking or feeling or being, and not only reveal it, but also wield it as an instrument of influence to awaken in the auditor correspondent experiences. But for this result not only an uncommon endowment by nature is necessary, but likewise an exquisite artistic training, prolonged with a skill and a patience which finally work a revolution in the vocal apparatus. Only one or two examples of this are seen in a generation. The Italian school of vocalization occasionally gives an instance in a Braham or a Lablache. But such perfection in the speaking voice is even rarer than in the singing. Henry Russell, whose reading and recitative were as consummate as his song, and played as irresistibly on the feelings, had a voice of perhaps the most nearly perfect expressive power known in our times. He could infuse into it every quality of experience, color it with every hue and tint of feeling, every light and shade of sentiment. To speak in illustrative metaphor, he could issue it at will in such a varying texture and quality of sound, such modified degrees of softness or hardness, energy or gentleness, as would suggest bolts of steel, of gold, of silver, or of opal; waves of velvet or of fire; ribbons of satin or of crystal. His organism seemed a mass of electric sensibility, all alive, and, in response to the touches of ideas within, giving out fitted tones and articulations through the whole diapason of humanity,