compelled to turn his back upon the public, and his simulated horror will be absolutely thrown away; if the actor’s face cannot be seen, his acting, of necessity, goes for little or nothing.  Even in our own days of triumphant stage illusion, it must be owned that the presentment of Banquo’s ghost still remains incomplete and unsatisfactory; but where such adroit managers as Mr. Macready, Mr. Charles Kean, and Mr. Phelps (to name no more) have failed, it seems vain to hope for success.  Pictorially, Banquo’s ghost has fared better, as all who are acquainted with Mr. Maclise’s “Macbeth” will readily acknowledge.

A curious fact in connection with the Banquo of Betterton’s time may here be noted.  Banquo was represented by an actor named Smith; the ghost, however, was personated by another actor—­Sandford.  Why this division of the part between two performers?  Smith was possessed of a handsome face and form, whereas Sandford was of “a low and crooked figure.”  He was the stage villain of his time, and was famed for his uncomely and malignant aspect; “the Spagnolet of the stage,” Cibber calls him; but it is certainly strange that he should therefore have enjoyed a prescriptive right to impersonate ghosts.

The attempted omission of Banquo’s ghost, however, made it clear that the old substantial shade emerging from a trap-door in the stage had ceased to satisfy the town.  Something more was required.  The public were becoming critical about their ghosts.  Credit could not be given to the spirits of the theatre if they exceeded a certain consistency.  There was a demand for something vaporous and unearthly, gliding, transparent, mysterious.  Scenic illusion was acquiring an artistic quality.  The old homely simple processes of the theatre were exploded.  The audience would only be deceived upon certain terms.  Mr. Boaden, adapting Ann Radcliffe’s “Romance of the Forest” to the stage of Covent Garden Theatre, records the anxiety he felt about the proper presentment of its supernatural incidents.  The contrivance he hit upon has since become one of the commonplaces of theatrical illusion.  It was arranged that the spectre should be seen through a bluish-gray gauze, so as to remove the too corporeal effect of a live actor, and convert the moving substance into a gliding essence.

The plan, however, was not carried into effect without considerable difficulty.  Mr. Harris, the manager, ordered a night rehearsal of the play, so that the author might judge of the success of the effects introduced.  The spectre was to be personated by one Thompson, a portly jovial actor, whose views as to the treatment of the supernatural upon the stage were of a very primitive kind.  He appeared upon the scene clad in the conventional solid armour of the theatre, with over all a gray gauze veil, as stiff as buckram, thrown about him.  Mr. Boaden describes his horror and astonishment at the misconception.  It had been intended that the gauze, stretched on a frame, should