Here indeed is an art equally fitted to amuse the weary, to instruct the docile, and to express the inspired. The prejudiced deprecators of the drama have delighted to depict the kings and queens of the stage descending from their scenic pedestals, casting off their tinsel robes, and slinking away in slovenly attire into cellar and garret. How much worthier of note is the reverse aspect, the noble metamorphosis actors undergo when the prosaic belittlement of their daily life of poverty and care slips off and they enter the scene in the greatest characters of history to enact the grandest conceptions of passion and poetry! And there is an influence in great impersonations to purify and ennoble their performers. The law of congruity necessitates it. “If,” said Clairon, “I am only an ordinary woman for twenty of the twenty-four hours of the day, no effort I can make will render me more than an ordinary woman when I appear as Agrippina or Semiramis.” The actor, to make heroic, sublime, or tender manifestations of the mysterious power and pity and doom of human nature, must have these qualities in his soul. No petty or vulgar nature could be competent to such strokes of wonder and pathos as the “Prithee, undo this button!” of Garrick; the “Fool, fool, fool!” of Kean; the “Vous pleurez, Zaïre!” of Lekain; the “After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well!” of Forrest. The theatre offers us an unrivalled opportunity for the economical activity of all our faculties, especially of our finer sentiments, which there play freely, disconnected from the exacting action of the studious intellect. The whole concentrated mass of life shown in action on the stage is ideally radiated into the bosoms of the beholders without cost to them. They despise, they admire, they laugh, they weep, they feel complacent in their contempt or in their reverence. Many who are too poor and outcast, or too busy and worn, or too proud and irascible, or too grieved and unfortunately circumstanced, for the indulgence of these feelings in real life, find the luxuries copiously and cheaply supplied in the scene. This is one reason why so many play-goers retain such grateful recollections of their favorites. Steele said, “From the acting of Mr. Betterton I have received more strong impressions of what is great and noble in human nature than from the arguments of the most solid philosophers or the descriptions of the most charming poets.” Robson declared, “I never came away from seeing Bannister without feeling ten years younger, and that if I had not, with Christian, got rid of my sins, I had got rid of what was pretty nearly as heavy to carry, my cares.” A noble lady of Edinburgh who in her youth had seen Siddons, when blind and nearly speechless in the torpor of extreme age, on being reminded of the great actress, broke into enthusiastic expressions, while smiles lighted up the features pale and wrinkled with nearly a hundred years.