Art, while it is not pure and simple nature, is not anything substituted for nature nor anything opposed to nature. It is something superadded to nature, which gives the artist supreme possession of his theme, supreme possession of himself, and supreme command of his treatment of his theme. It is a grasped generalization of the truths of nature freed from all coarse, crude, and degrading accidents and details. The consummate artist, observing the principle or law, does everything easily; but the empiric, striving at the facts, does everything laboriously. Feeling transmuted into art by being passed through thought and fixed in form is transferred for its exemplification from the volition of the cerebral nerves to the automatic execution of the spinal nerves. This does not exhaust the strength, but leaves one fresh after apparently the most tremendous exertions. Talma, Rachel, Salvini, did not sweat or fatigue themselves, however violent their action seemed. But when feeling, instead of having been passed through thought and fixed in form for automatic exhibition, is livingly radiated into form by the will freshly exerted each time, the exaction on the forces of the organism is great. It is then nature in her expensiveness that is seen, rather than the art which secures the maximum of result at the minimum of cost. It was said of Barry that excessive sensibility conquered his powers. His heart overcame his head; while Garrick never lost possession of himself and of his acting. The one felt everything himself before he made his audience feel it; the other remained cool, and yet by his kingly self-control forced his audience to feel so much the more. In his direct honest feeling and exertion Forrest paid the expensive penalty of the Natural School. After playing one of his great parts he was drenched with perspiration and blew off steam like a locomotive brought to rest. The nerves of his brain and the nerves of his spinal cord were insufficiently detached in their activities, too much mixed. Like Edmund Kean, he was as a fusee, and the points of the play were as matches; at each electric touch his nerve-centres exploded and his muscles struck lightning. But in the Artistic School the actor is like a lens made of ice, through which the sunbeams passing set on fire whatever is placed in their focus. The player who can pour the full fire of passion through his soul while his nerves remain firm and calm has command of every power of nature, and reaches the greatest effects without waste. But, as Garrick said,— “In vain will Art from Nature help implore When Nature for herself exhausts her store.”