From these causes, or from others of a kindred nature, the French tragic stage has within our generation possessed no actor of commanding genius.  One actress indeed adorned it for a few brief years—­the great Rachel.  But she, strange and unnatural production of unnatural art, was a phenomenon, and one not likely to be soon reproduced.  The art of the Comedie Francaise is to-day inimitable.  Like Thalberg’s playing, it is the very apotheosis of the mechanical.  There talent is trained and cut and trimmed into one set fashion, till the very magnitude of the work becomes imposing, as the gardens of Le Notre in their grand extent almost console the spectator for the absence of virgin forests and of free-gushing streams.  But could the forest be brought side by side with the parterre, could Niagara pour its emerald floods or Trenton its amber cascades side by side with the Fountain of Latona or the Great Basin of Neptune, Nature, terrible in her grandeur, would rule supreme.  Such has been the comparison afforded by the appearance of Ernesto Rossi on the Parisian stage.  It was Shakespeare and genius coming into direct competition with perfectly-trained talent and with Racine.

Early last October a modest announcement was made that Signor Rossi would give two performances at the Salle Ventadour, one of them to be for the benefit of the sufferers by the Southern inundations. Othello was the play selected for both occasions.  The first night arrived.  The unlucky opera-house, shorn of its ancient popularity, was not half filled.  Public curiosity was not specially aroused.  Nobody cared particularly to see an Italian actor perform in a translation of a play by an English dramatist.  Of the scanty audience present, fully one-half were Italians, and the rest were mostly English, lured thither by the desire of comparing the new actor with his great rival, Salvini.  There was a sprinkling of Americans and a scanty representation of the Parisian public.

When Othello came upon the stage the foreign actor received but a cool and unenthusiastic greeting.  His appearance was a disappointment to those familiar with the majestic bearing and picturesque garb of Salvini.  His dress was unbecoming, and the dusky tint of his stage complexion accorded ill with his blue eyes.  Then, too, his conception of the character jarred on the ideas of those who had seen the other great Italian actor.  It was hard to dethrone the majestic and princely Moor, the stately general of Salvini’s conception, to give place to the frank, free-hearted soldier, intoxicated with the gladness of successful wooing, that Rossi brings before us.  Certain melodramatic points, also, in the earlier acts, such as the “Ha!” wherewith Rossi with upraised arms starts from Desdemona when Brabantio reminds him

  “She has deceived her father, and may thee,”