Now, precisely the crowning originality of Forrest as an actor, that which secures him a distinctive place in the historic evolution of the drama, is that while the ideals which the great actors before him impersonated were monarchical, aristocratic, or purely individual, he embodied the democratic ideal of the intrinsic independence and royalty of man. Give Kemble only the man to play, he was nothing; give him the paraphernalia of rank and station, he was imposing. But Forrest, a born democrat, his bare feet on the earth, his bare breast to his foes, his bare forehead to the sky, asked no foreign aid, no gilded toggery, no superstitious titles, to fill the theatre with his presence and thrill the crowd with his spell. There is an egotism of pride, an egotism of vanity, an egotism of conceit, all of which, based in want of sympathy, are contemptible and detestable. Forrest was remarkable for a tremendous and obstinate pride, but not for vanity or conceit; and his sympathy was as deep and quick as his pride, so that he was not an odious egotist, although he was imperious and resentful. Many distinguished players have trodden the stage as gentlemen, Forrest trod it as man. The ideal of detachment, authority throned in cold-blooded self-regard, has been often set forth. He exhibited the ideal of identification, burning honesty of passion and open fellowship. The former is the ideal of polite society. The latter is the ideal of unsophisticated humanity. Macready asserted himself in his characters; Forrest asserted his characters in himself. Both were self-attached, though in an opposite way, and thus missed the perfect triumph which Delsarte achieved by abolishing self and always resuscitating alive in its pure integrity the very truth of the characters he essayed. Macready as an elaborate and frigid representative of titular kings was a sovereign on the boards, a subject elsewhere. Forrest as an inborn representative of natural kings was a true sovereign in himself everywhere and always. The former by his petulant pride and pomp and his drilled exemption from the sway of the sympathies secured the approval of a sensitive and irritable _nil admirari_ class. The latter by the fulness of his sympathies and his impassioned eloquence as the impersonator of oppressed races awakened the enthusiastic admiration of the people. A line, said an accomplished critic, drawn across the tops of the points of Macready would leave Forrest below in matters of mechanical detail, but would only cut the bases of his pyramids of power and passion. His chief rôles were all embodiments of the elemental vernacular of man in his natural virtue and glory rather than in the refinements of his choicest dialects. Always asserting the superiority of man to his accidents, he will be remembered in the history of the theatre as the greatest democrat that up to his time had ever stepped before the footlights. He had sincerity, eloquence, power, nobleness, sublimity.