To the present generation of playgoers that veteran actor has ceased to be even a name (the present generation of playgoers being, according to my observation of it, specially remarkable for its vast and comprehensive ignorance of theatrical history), but in other years his name was one to conjure with, and to the few persons extant who cherish memories of our Stage in the eighteen-fifties it recalls a delightful reality. There are players whose individuality is so vital, so redolent of strength and joy, that the idea of death is never associated with them. Like great poetic thoughts, they enjoy an immortal youth in the imagination, and to hear that they are dead is to suffer the shock of something seeming strange and unnatural as well as grimly sad. Such an actor was Sedley-Smith. Robust, rosy, stately, with a rich, ringing voice, a merry laugh, and a free and noble courtesy of demeanor, he lives in my remembrance as a perfect incarnation of generous life,--glad in its strength and diffusive of gladness and strength all around him. His talents were versatile. He played all parts well and in some he was superlatively excellent. There has been no _Sir Oliver Surface_ on the modern Stage to be compared with his. It came upon the duplicity and foul sentimentalism of the scheming _Joseph_ like a burst of sunshine on a dirty fog, and the gladness that it inspired in the breast of the sympathetic spectator was of the kind that brings tears into the eyes. The man who inspired the personation was felt to be genuine--a type of nature’s nobility. His _Old Dornton_, in “The Road to Ruin,” was a stately, pathetic type of character, animated by what seems, after all, the best of human emotions,--paternal love. He could impart an impressive dignity even to the fur-trimmed anguish of the sequestered _Stranger_.