The question whether Shakespeare's Juliet be correctly interpreted is not one of public importance. It might be ever so correctly interpreted without producing the right effect. There have been many Juliets. There has, in our time, been no Juliet so completely fascinating and irresistible as that of Adelaide Neilson. Through the medium of that Shakespearean character the actress poured forth that strange, thrilling, indescribable power which more than anything else in the world vindicates by its existence the spiritual grandeur and destiny of the human soul. Neither the accuracy of her ideals nor the fineness of her execution would have accomplished the result that attended her labours and crowned her fame. There was an influence back of these--a spark of the divine fire--a consecration of the individual life--as eloquent to inform as it was potent to move. Adelaide Neilson was one of those strange, exceptional natures that, often building better than they know, not only interpret "the poet's dream" but give to it an added emphasis and a higher symbolism. Each element of her personality was rich and rare. The eyes--now glittering with a mischievous glee that seemed never to have seen a cloud or felt a sorrow, now steady, frank, and sweet, with innocence and trust,--could, in one moment, flash with the wild fire of defiance or the glittering light of imperious command, or, equally in one moment, could soften with mournful thought and sad remembrance, or darken with the far-off look of one who hears the waving wings of angels and talks with the spirits of the dead. The face, just sufficiently unsymmetrical to be brimful of character, whether piquant or pensive; the carriage of body,--easy yet quaint in its artless grace, like that of a pretty child in the unconscious fascination of infancy; the restless, unceasing play of mood, and the instantaneous and perfect response of expression and gesture,--all these were the denotements of genius; and, above all these, and not to be mistaken in its irradiation of the interior spirit of that extraordinary creature, was a voice of perfect music--rich, sonorous, flexible, vibrant, copious in volume, yet delicate as a silver thread--a voice "Like the whisper of the woods In prime of even, when the stars are few."