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a grand and magnificent echo, truly, yet but an echo; and it has been added that even were this undeniable, the master had many pupils, and the world had but one Rachel!

Undoubtedly; but without her master and their joint labors for years, would the genius of Rachel ever have found a perfect utterance?

Mrs. Jameson, the English authoress, has drawn a picture of Rachel which so vividly illustrates the effect of training and practice on the artist that I quote it-premising, however, that Mrs. Jameson was very far from being a partisan or even an admirer of Rachel. With most English women, the possibility of anything French being worthy of mention in the same breath with anything English, is not admissible; and Mrs. Jameson shares the peculiarity so far as to deny Rachel a place as an artist alongside of the tragedy queens of England. "The parts in which Rachel once excelled-the Phedre and the Hermione, for instance-have become formalized and hard, like studies cast in bronze; and when she plays a new part it has no freshness. I always go to see her whenever I can. I admire her as what she is-the Parisian actress, practised in every trick of her métur trade. I admire what she does, I think how well it is all done, and am inclined to clap and applaud her drapery, perfect and ostentatiously studied in every fold, just with the same feeling that I applaud myself.

As to the last scene of Adrienne Lecouvreur,' (which those who are avides de sensation, athirst for painful emotion, go to see as they would drink a dram, and critics laud as a miracle of art;) it is altogether a mistake and a failure. It is beyond the just limits of terror and pity— beyond the legitimate sphere of art. It reminds us of the story of Gentil Bellini and the Sultan. The Sultan much admired his picture of the decollation of John the Baptist,

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A BEAUTIFUL SERPENT.

but informed him that it was inaccurate-surgically-for the tendons and muscles ought to shrink where divided; and then calling for one of his slaves, he drew his scimitar, and striking off the head of the wretch, gave the horrorstruck artist a lesson in practical anatomy. So we might possibly learn from Rachel's imitative representation, (studied in a hospital as they say,) how poison acts on the frame, and how the limbs and features writhe unto death. I remember that when I first saw her in Hermione, she reminded me of a serpent, and the same impression continues. The long meagre form, with its graceful undulating movements, the long narrow face and features, the contracted jaw, the high brow, the brilliant supernatural eyes which seem to glance every way at once; the sinister smile; the painted red lips, which look as though they had lapped, or could lap, blood; all these bring before me, the idea of a Lamia, the serpent nature in the woman's form. In Lydia, and in Athalia, she touches the extremes of vice and wickedness with such a masterly lightness and precision, that I am full of wondering admiration for the actress. There is not a turn of her figure, not an expression in her face, not a fold in her gorgeous drapery, that is not a study; but withal such a consciousness of her art, and such an ostentation of the means she employs, that the power remains always extraneous, as it were, and exciting only to the senses and the intellect."

A glance at the life-history of Rachel will show more fully how gradual was her progress toward perfection, how thorough was her training, how laborious the means by which she "clutched the dramatic diadem." She was the daughter of a Jewish pedler, who pursued his calling in various parts of Switzerland and Germany, and was followed in his wanderings by his family, consisting of his wife, four daughters, of whom Rachel was the second, and

a son.

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At Lyons, where they took up their residence temporarily, Rachel and her sister Sarah contributed to the common support by singing at the cafés and other public resorts; and at Paris, whither the family removed in 1831, the two sisters similarly employed themselves on the boulevards. Choron, the founder of the institution for the study of sacred music, struck by their performance, took them both under his instruction; but finding that the talent of Rachel, to whom he gave the name of Eliza, was dramatic rather than vocal, he transferred her to the care of M. St. Aulaire, a teacher of declamation, who carefully grounded her in the chief female parts of the standard classical drama. Her admirable personation of Hermione, at a private performance of "Andromaque" procured her admission in 1836 as a pupil of the conservatoire; and shortly after she obtained an engagement at the Gymnase, where on April 24, 1837, she made her public debut under the name of Rachel, in a vaudeville. Whether the part was not adapted to her, or she had not yet acquired confidence in her own powers, the performance attracted little attention, and for upwards of a year she did not again appear prominently before the public.

In the meantime she studied assiduously under Samson, an actor and author of great experience, and on September 7, 1838, startled the Parisian public by a personation of Camille in "Les Horaces" at the Theatre Francais, so full of originality and tragic intensity as almost to obliterate the traditions of former actresses in the same part. At her third appearance the receipts rose from about 300 francs on the first night, to 2,040, a fabulous sum for a performance of a classical drama; and thenceforth she stood alone on the French stage, confessedly the first actress of the day, and never probably rivaled in her peculiar walk of tragedy. The long neglected plays of Corneille, Racine and Voltaire, were speedily revived for

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her, and she appeared with peculiar success in the leading characters. "In personating these characters she paid little regard to the cherished traditions of the stage, and the actors performing with her were frequently confused and even startled by tones and gestures so different from those established by custom as to appear to them wholly foreign to the play. The studied declamation of the old school was exchanged for an utterance at once natural and impressive, and the expression of her face, her gesture or attitude, scarcely less eloquent than her voice, conveyed a fullness and force of meaning which made each part a new creation in her hands. She excelled in the delineation of the fiercer passions, but jealousy and hatred were so subtly interpreted, that the mind was even less affected by what she expressed than by what she left to the imagination."

No actress owes more to training than Kate Bateman. Her severe discipline began, as I have shown, in earliest childhood, at the hands of a father whose skill in this regard is second to that of no man I ever met. But even when Miss Bateman attained to more mature powers, she never considered herself fully competent to play even the simplest part that fell to her lot without severe study and practice.

An actress who played with her in Boston during the engagement in which she produced "Leah" for the first time on any stage-(a character in which she has since obtained world-wide celebrity)-told me that she practised the one single feature of rushing on the stage pursued by the town rabble, during two long hours every day regularly for a week, before she trusted herself to do it before the public on the first night. The consequence was that the effect was magnificent-the persecuted and lovely Jewess flying with swift feet before the vile rabble of a bigoted German town, hooting at her, stoning her—she

DEAN-MOWATT-BETTERTON.

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as a climax turning and defying them-that one effect was enough to carry the weight of the entire play and make it

a success.

Julia Dean, who obtained great celebrity, especially in the Western and Southern States, is another actress who was severely drilled by her father. She found it difficult to overcome a certain listlessness which was of course a great drawback to the truthful character of certain passionate scenes.

On one occasion, while she was playing Julia in "The Hunchback," her father, annoyed at her listless manner, advanced close to the edge of the scene, and cried out to her in a hoarse whisper, "Fire, Julia, fire!"

The poor girl, taking him at his literal meaning, gave an agitated shriek, and, to the blank amazement of the audience exclaimed, "Where, father? where?"

Mrs. Mowatt relates that for months before she made her debut, she took fencing lessons, to gain firmness of position and freedom of limb; used dumb-bells to overcome the constitutional weakness of her arms and chest; exercised her voice during four hours every day, to increase its power; wore a voluminous train for as many hours daily, to learn the graceful management of queenly or classic robes; and neglected no means that could fit her to realize her beau ideal of Campbell's lines:

"But by the mighty actor brought,
Illusion's perfect triumphs come;
Verse ceases to be airy thought,
And sculpture to be dumb."

Betterton, who was perhaps the greatest actor the English stage ever possessed, with the sole exception of Garrick, furnishes one of the most extraordinary examples of the value of training that the world has ever known. Almost incredible accounts remain to us of the effects produced by his performance. The magnetic influence of

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