the critics—­it was the true one.  Her Clarice was perhaps the least successful of her impersonations; and given as an afterpiece, it taxed unfairly the endurance of an actress, who had already been some hours upon the stage.  But as a striking illustration of the reality of her performance, we may mention, that, in the scene where she is supposed by her guests to be acting, her fellow actors, who should have applauded the tragic outburst which the public divine to be real, were so disconcerted by the vehemence and seeming reality of her grief and despair, that on the first representation of “Comedy and Tragedy” they actually forgot their parts, and had to be called to task by the author for failing properly to support the star.  “No man,” it is said, “is a hero to his valet de chambre,” and few indeed are the artists who can make their fellow artists on the stage forget that the mimic passion which convulses them is but consummate art after all.

Mary Anderson’s present Lyceum season will exhibit her in characters which will give opportunity for displaying powers of a widely different order to those called forth in the last.  A new Juliet and a new Lady Macbeth will show the capacity she possesses for the true exhibition of the tenderest as well as the stormiest passions which can agitate the human breast; and she may perhaps appear in Cushman’s famous role of Meg Merrilies.  In all these she invites comparison with great impersonators of these parts who are familiar to the stage.  We will not anticipate the verdict of the public, but of this much we are assured that rarely can Shakespeare’s favorite heroine have been represented by so much youth, and grace, and beauty, and genuine artistic ability combined.  Juliet was her first part, and has always been, regarded by Mary Anderson with the affection due to a first love.  But it may not be generally known that she imagines her forte to lie rather in the exhibition of the stormier passions, and that she succeeds better in parts like Lady Macbeth or Meg Merrilies.  I remember her once saying to me, as she raised her beautiful figure to its full height, and stretched her hand to the ceiling, “I am always at my best when I am uttering maledictions.”  Thus far, Mary Anderson has shown herself to us in characters which must give a very incomplete estimate of her powers.  None indeed of the parts she assumed were adapted to bring out the highest qualities of an artist.  That she has succeeded in inspiring the freshness and glow of life into plays, some of which, at least, were supposed to be consigned almost to the limbo of disused stage properties, stamps her as possessing genuine histrionic power.  She has earned distinguished fame all over the Western continent.  London as well as the great cities of the kingdom have hailed her as a Queen of the Stage.  Such an experience as hers is rare indeed, almost solitary, in its annals.  A self-trained girl, born quite out of the circle or influence of stage associations,