Let us now summon, as first in order, the name that heads the list of the actors above given. Henry Placide enjoyed in public estimation a fame worthy and well deserved. He was an actor of the old school, and his conceptions were the fruit of appreciative and careful study; his acting was a lucid and harmonious interpretation of his author; and his elocution, clear and resonant, was the speech of a scholar and a gentleman. The artistic sense was never forgotten in his delineations, and his name on the bills was a guaranty of intellectual pleasure. He was not broadly funny like Burton, or Holland; but those who remember his _Sir Harcourt Courtley_, his _Jean Jacques François Antoine Hypolite de Frisac_, in "Paris and London," and his _Clown_, in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," will not deny that he was the owner of a rich vein of eccentric humor, and that he worked his possession effectually. He was an expert in the Gallic parts where the speech is a struggle between French and English, and, indeed, since his departure they, too, have vanished from the stage. But those who saw him as _Haversac_, in "The Old Guard"; as _The Tutor_, in "To Parents and Guardians"; or as _Monsieur Dufard_, in "The First Night," will bear witness to his inimitable manner, and to his facile blending of the grave and gay. We shall never forget how, in the last-named character (_Mons. Dufard_), having engaged his daughter for a "first appearance," and having declared his own ability to manage the drum in the orchestra on the occasion, he, suddenly, during the mimic rehearsal, at an allusion in the text to sunrise, stamped violently on the stage; and to the startled manager's exclamation of "What's that!" serenely replied: "Zat ees ze cannon vich announce ze brek of day--I play him on ze big drum in ze night." In choleric old men Placide was unsurpassed. All the touches that go toward the creation of a grim, irascible, thwarted, bluff old gentleman, he commanded at will. His _Colonel Hardy_, in "Paul Pry," for instance, what an example was that! I hear him, now, at the close of the comedy, when things had drifted to a happy anchorage--hear him saying in reply to the soothing remark: "Why, Colonel, you've every thing your own way,"--"Yes, I know I have every thing my own way; but ---- it, I hav'n't _my own way_ of having it!" His repertory covered a wide range; and we retain vivid recollections of his _Sir Peter Teazle_, his _Doctor Ollapod_, and his _Silky_; the last in "The Road to Ruin," in which comedy, by the way, we remember seeing Placide, Blake, Burton, Lester, Bland, and Mrs. Hughes; truly a phenomenal cast.