For aught I know Irving may have been as good an actor as his countrymen who saw him thought him. Nay, he may have been half as good as my countrymen who did not see him think him. I myself saw him play only two or three times. He was not then a good actor, but that was a long time before his death; judgment from the fading memory of a performance decades ago would hardly do. Wherein, then, lies excuse of this present infervency—this cry _qui vive_ at the outpost of the camp? Herein. Not only were Irving’s credentials defective; there is a strong presumption that the defect was irreparable—that they “certificate a sham.” This defect was racial. The English are, if not an unemotional, an undemonstrative people. When sad the Englishman does not weep, when pleased he does not laugh. Anger him and he will neither stamp nor tear his hair; startle him and he jumps not an inch. His conversation is destitute of vivacity and unaided by gesticulation. His face does not light up when he deems it his duty to smile. His transports of affection are moderated to the seemly ceremony of shaking hands; though he is said sometimes to kiss his grandmother if she is past seventy and will let him. Removed from his brumous environment, the English human being becomes in time accessible to light and heat—penetrable by the truth that all manifestation of emotion and sentiment is not necessarily vulgar; but in the tight little isle Stolidity holds her immemorial sway without other change in the administrative function than occasional substitution of the stare of deprecation for the stare of complacency. To suppose that great actors can come of a race like that is to trifle with the laws of nature. Acting is preëminently the art of expression—expression of the sentiments and emotions by speech, look, gesture, movement—in every way that one person can address the eye and ear of another. It requires the acutest and alertest sensibilities, faculties all responsive to subtle stirs of feeling. Are these English characteristics? Clearly not; they are those of the peoples that (in England) are despised as “volatile,” “garrulous,” “excitable”—the French and Italians, for examples, who have produced the only really good actors of modern times. Our own actors are better than the English, but not good; one sees better acting about a dining-table in Paris than has ever been seen on the stage of London or New York—excepting when it is held by players in whose veins is the fire of Southern suns, whose nerves dance to the rhythmic beat of Mediterranean ripples and keep, with Capri’s sunny fountains, Perpetual holiday. One pale globule of our cold Teutonic blood queers the whole performance. For German, English and American actors society should provide “homes,” with light employment, good plain food and, when they keep their mouths shut and their limbs quiet, thunders of artificial applause. II