Delsarte could shrink and diminish his stature under the shrivelling contraction of meanness and cowardice or suspicion and crime until it seemed dwarfed, or lift and dilate it under the inspiration of grand ideas and magnanimous passions until it seemed gigantic. Every great emotional impulse that took possession of him seemed to melt all the parts of his organism together into a flexible whole with flowing joints, and then his fused movements awed the spectator like something supernatural. His face was a living canvas on which his soul painted the very proportions and hues of every feeling. His voice in tone and inflection took every color and shadow of thought and emotion, from the sombre cloudiness of breathing awe to the crystalline lucidity of articulating intellect. His inward furnishing even richer than the outward, he would sit down at the piano, in a coarse overcoat, in a room with bare walls, and, as he acted and sang, Œdipus, Agamemnon, Orestes, Augustus, Cinna, Pompey, Robert le Diable, Tartuffe, rose before you and revealed themselves in a truth that appeared almost miraculous and with a power that was actually irresistible. It was no reproduction by painful mimicry of externals, no portrayal by elaborate delineation of details. It was positive identification and resurrection. It was a real recreation of characters in their ensemble of being, and an exhibited reanimation of them by imaginative insight and sympathetic assimilation. Most wonderful of all, and greatest proof of the value of his system of drill, he could catch a part by inspiration and go through it under the automatic direction of nature, and then deliberately repeat the same thing by critical perception and conscious free will; and he could also reverse the process with equal ease, critically elaborate a rôle by analysis and then fix it in the nerves and perform it with inspired spontaneity. This was the highest possible exemplification of the dramatic art by the founder of its only perfect school. It was Classic, because it had the greatest dignity, repose, power, symmetry, unity. It was Romantic, because it was full of the most startling effects, beautiful combinations, sudden changes, surprising contrasts, and extremes. It was Natural, because exactly conformed to the facts of experience and the laws of truth as disclosed by the profoundest study of nature. And above all it was supremely Artistic, because in it intuition, instinct, inspiration, intelligence, will, and educated discipline were reconciled with one another in co-operative harmony, and everything was freely commanded by conscious knowledge and not left to accident.