which he worked, is worthy of the study and emulation of those who cultivate any art.  In none has excellence ever been achieved by deeper thought or more unremitting labor.  It would be absurd to question Macready’s real eminence, based on the judgment of critical audiences with whom great acting was not a mere matter of tradition.  But we may readily concede that in natural endowments he fell short of the most illustrious of his predecessors, that he lacked the intuitive grasp which he ascribes to Mrs. Siddons and to Kean, and that he never reached the intensity and complete abandon which gave an overwhelming effect to their highest performances.  We may apply to his acting what Carlyle has so justly said of the poetry of Schiller, that it “shows rather like a partial than a universal gift—­the labored product of certain faculties rather than the spontaneous product of his whole nature.”  There was always the perception of the natural limit of his qualifications, instead of any suggestiveness of a boundless capacity.  His voice, though rich and musical and of extraordinary compass, had not the sonorous roundness and the penetrating sweetness of the rarest organs, and was subject to a tremulousness which, though often pleasing, could not but be considered as a defect.  His features, though capable of great expression, had neither the beauty nor the extraordinary mobility so desirable in an actor.  His attitudes and walk were graceful, picturesque, often superb, but not absolutely free from conventionalism.  Instead of bursting away, as Kean had done, from the meshes of tradition, he had only expanded and attenuated them to the utmost, and if they did not really cramp, they still appeared to circumscribe Nature and truth.  It is evident that without the most persistent efforts he could never have triumphed over obstacles and gained the highest rank in his profession.  How ardent and conscientious was the struggle a thousand details in this volume bear testimony.  Perhaps the most curious is the description given in a letter written after his retirement of the methods he had practiced for repressing exaggeration in gesture, utterance or facial expression.  “I would lie down on the floor, or stand straight against a wall, or get my arms within a bandage, and, so pinned or confined, repeat the most violent passages of Othello, Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, or whatever would require most energy and emotion; I would speak the most passionate bursts of rage under the supposed constraint of whispering them in the ear of him of her to whom they were addressed, thus keeping both voice and gesture in subjection to the real impulse of the feeling....  I was obliged also to have frequent recourse to the looking-glass, and had two or three large ones in my room to reflect each view of the posture I might have fallen into, besides being under the necessity of acting the passion close to a glass to restrain the tendency to exaggerate its expression—­which was the most difficult