And in his latter performances of Falstaff he yielded more and more to his besetting temptation to overdecorate a character with petty ingenuities and with finicky details, which came in time to detract from its broad outlines. He had an inventive mind and he was continually in search of novelties of gesture and of business. Even in his tragic parts he was prone to obtrusive pettinesses. Often at the end of the run of a play, and sometimes even at the beginning, he seemed to act outside the character rather than inside it. Yet, when all is said, it remains that Tree deserved well of the playgoing public of London; and this public could not well help being grateful for the many opportunities he had provided for it to behold Shakspere’s plays, always beautifully and tastefully mounted. It had become accustomed to his mannerisms and it knew what to expect when it flocked to His Majesty’s Theater. But in the United States, Tree was never able to establish a position comparable with that which he held in Great Britain. On our side of the Atlantic he was only a wandering star; he was not the manager of the foremost theater with the credit of a score of Shaksperian revivals; and we Americans had not become habituated to his defects, and therefore we could not be expected to be as tolerant of them as were his British followers. He was well aware of this atmosphere of indifference, so to speak, in America, an atmosphere he could never dispel. When I saw him last in London, ten or fifteen years ago, he told me that he was thinking of crossing over again. “But you don’t like my acting in New York,” he added sadly; and I could not honestly contradict him, as perhaps he hoped that I should. VI Where the performances of Shakspere’s plays at His Majesty’s were sometimes insufficient was in the acting; and this was not Tree’s fault, for he was always eager to strengthen his cast by the engagement of the best actors available. At more than one of his revivals of the ‘Merry Wives’ he persuaded Ellen Terry and Mrs. Kendal to emerge from retirement to disport themselves as the joyous dames who delight in befooling Falstaff. The fault lay in the fact that fine performers were not to be had. Actors who were good in Shaksperian parts have always been scarce, and they are now steadily becoming scarcer.