The public was at this time to learn with interest that the actor was to accompany Lady Burdett-Coutts on a voyage to the Mediterranean in her yacht _The Walrus_, and all was speculation as to the party and their movements. One of her guests was an agreeable young American named Bartlett, now better known as Mr. Burdett-Coutts, since become the husband of the lady. During this pleasant voyage _The Walrus_ directed her course to Venice and various Italian cities—all new and welcome to our actor, who was at the same time taking stock of the manners, customs, dresses, etc., of the country, and acquiring, as it were, the general flavour and _couleur locale_. His scene-painter had also found his way there, and was filling his sketch-book with rich “bits of colour,” picturesque streets, and buildings. The manager was, in fact, pondering over a fresh Shakespearian venture—an Italian play, which was to be produced with the new season. He was, in fact, about to set on the stage ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ with every aid that money and taste could supply. The moment this selection was known, it was felt almost universally that it was exactly the piece that should have been chosen. Everyone anticipated by a sort of instinct what entertainment was in store for them: for here was the part and here was the actor. Notwithstanding the elaborate character of the preparations, the whole was “got up” in some four weeks, though this period did not comprise the long course of private study and meditation during which the scheme was gradually matured in his mind. When on his yachting expedition he had taken advantage of a hasty visit to Tangier to purchase Moorish costumes to be used in the Shakespearian spectacle he was preparing. To fill up the interval he got ready Colman’s drama ‘The Iron Chest,’ produced on September 27, 1879. This powerful but lugubrious piece has always had an unaccountable attraction for tragedians. Sir Edward Mortimer belongs, indeed, to the family of Sir Giles Overreach. The character offered temptation to our actor from its long-sustained, mournful, and poetical soliloquies, in which the state of the remorseful soul was laid bare at protracted length; but, though modified and altered, the piece is hopelessly old-fashioned. It is impossible in our day to accept seriously a “band of robbers,” who moreover live in “the forest”; and the “proofs” of Sir Edward’s guilt, a knife and blood-stained cloth, carefully preserved in an old chest which is always in sight, have a burlesque air.