To what position in the world of intelligence does the actor’s art entitle him, and what is his contribution to the general sum of instruction?  We are often told that the art is ephemeral; that it creates nothing; that when the actor’s personality is withdrawn from the public eye he leaves no trace behind.  Granted that his art creates nothing; but does it not often restore?  It is true that he leaves nothing like the canvas of the painter and the marble of the sculptor, but has he done nought to increase the general stock of ideas?  The astronomer and naturalist create nothing, but they contribute much to the enlightenment of the world.  I am taking the highest standard of my art, for I maintain that in judging any calling you should consider its noblest and not its most ignoble products.  All the work that is done on the stage cannot stand upon the same level, any more than all the work that is done in literature.  You do not demand that your poets and novelists shall all be of the same calibre.  An immense amount of good writing does no more than increase the gayety of mankind; but when Johnson said that the gayety of nations was eclipsed by the death of Garrick, he did not mean that a mere barren amusement had lost one of its professors.  When Sir Joshua Reynolds painted Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, and said he had achieved immortality by putting his name on the hem of her garment, he meant something more than a pretty compliment, for her name can never die.  To give genuine and wholesome entertainment is a very large function of the stage, and without that entertainment very many lives would lose a stimulus of the highest value.  If recreation of every legitimate kind is invaluable to the worker, especially so is the recreation of the drama, which brightens his faculties, enlarges his vision of the picturesque, and by taking him for a time out of this work-a-day world, braces his sensibilities for the labors of life.  The art which does this may surely claim to exercise more than a fleeting influence upon the world’s intelligence.  But in its highest developments it does more; it acts as a constant medium for the diffusion of great ideas, and by throwing new lights upon the best dramatic literature, it largely helps the growth of education.  It is not too much to say that the interpreters of Shakespeare on the stage have had much to do with the widespread appreciation of his works.  Some of the most thoughtful students of the poet have recognized their indebtedness to actors, while for multitudes the stage has performed the office of discovery.  Thousands who flock to-day to see a representation of Shakespeare, which is the product of much reverent study of the poet, are not content to regard it as a mere scenic exhibition.  Without it Shakespeare might have been for many of them a sealed book; but many more have been impelled by the vivid realism of the stage to renew studies which other occupations or lack of leisure have arrested.