The characters in the comedy were creatures of flesh and blood to the author, and they come out boldly, therefore, on the stage. Marian Lea is a woman of the Rosalind order--handsome, noble, magnanimous, unconventional, passionate in nature, but sufficient unto herself, humorous, playful, and radiant with animal spirits. Ada Rehan embodied her according to that ideal. The chief exaction of the part is simplicity--which yet must not be allowed to degenerate into tameness. The sweet affection of a daughter for her father, the coyness yet the allurement of a girl for her lover, the refinement of high birth, the blithe bearing and free demeanour of a child of the woods, and the predominant dignity of purity and honour--those are the salient attributes of the part. Ada Rehan struck the true note at the outset--the note of buoyant health, rosy frolic, and sprightly adventure--and she sustained it evenly and firmly to the last. Every eye was pleased with the frank, careless, cheerful beauty of her presence, and every ear was soothed and charmed with her fluent and expressive delivery of the verse. In this, as in all of the important representations that Ada Rehan has given, the delightful woman-quality was conspicuously present. She can readily impersonate a boy. No actress since Adelaide Neilson has done that so well. But the crowning excellence of her art was its expression of essential womanhood. Her acting was never trivial and it never obtruded the tedious element of dry intellect. It refreshed--and the spectator was happier for having seen her. Many pleasant thoughts were scattered in many minds by her performance of Maid Marian, and no one who saw it will ever part with the remembrance of it. XIX. ELLEN TERRY: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.