in presenting in his attitudes the image of poetical beauty, without neglecting the distinguishing traits of character: the dominion of the arts always consists in the union of the ideal with the natural.

When I saw the play of the Twenty-fourth of February performed by two celebrated poets, A. W. Schlegel and Werner, I was singularly struck by their mode of declamation. They prepared their effects by long anticipation, and plainly discovered that they would have been vexed to be applauded at the beginning. The whole was always present to their thought; and a partial success, which might have injured that general effect, would have appeared to them only in the light of a fault. Schlegel made me first perceive, by his manner of acting in Werner's play, all the interest of a part which I had scarcely observed in the reading. It was the innocence of guilt, the unhappiness of a worthy man, who has committed a crime at the age of seven years, when he did not yet know what was crime; and who, although at peace with his conscience, has been unable to dissipate the uneasiness of his imagination. I judged the man who was represented before me, just as we penetrate a real character, by motions, looks, and accents, which betray it unconsciously. In France, the greater part of our actors never appear not to know what they are about; on the contrary, there is something studied in all the means they make use of, and the effect is always foreseen.

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Schroeder, of whom all the Germans speak as an admirable actor, could not bear to have it said that he played well at such or such a moment, or that he spoke well such or such a verse. "Have I played the part well?" he would ask "have I been the very person I represented?" And, in fact, his genius seemed to change its nature with every change of part. In France they would not dare to recite tragedy, as he often did, in the ordinary tone of conversation. There is a general color, an established accent, which is of strict necessity in the Alexandrine verse; and the most impassioned movements rest on this pedestal as on an essential postulate of art. The French actors, in general, look to receive applause, and

deserve it, at almost every verse; the German actors pretend to it only at the conclusion of the piece, and scarcely ever obtain it sooner.

The diversity of scenes and of situations in the German pieces, necessarily gives room to much greater variety in the talents of the performers. The dumb show tells to more advantage; and the patience of the spectators permits a number of details which render the pathetic more natural. The wit of an actor, in France, consists almost entirely in declamation; in Germany there is a much greater number of accessories to this principal art; and even speech itself is sometimes hardly necessary to affect the audience.

When Schroeder, playing the part of King Lear, in a German translation, was brought sleeping upon the stage, it is said that this sleep of wretchedness and old age drew tears even before he was awakened, before his lamentations had made known his sufferings; and when he bore in his arms the body of his young daughter Cordelia, slain because she would not abandon him, nothing could be so fine as the strength given him by despair. A last hope supported him, he tried if Cordelia breathed still: he, so aged himself, could not believe that a being so young could have died already. A passionate grief, in an old man half consumed, produced the most distressing emotion.

The German actors, in general, may be justly censured for seldom putting in practice the knowledge of the arts of design, so largely spread abroad in their nation: their attitudes are not fine; the excess of their simplicity often degenerates into awkwardness, and they scarcely ever equal the French in the nobleness and elegance of their deportment and motions. However, for some time past, the German actresses have studied the art of attitude, and perfect themselves in that sort of grace, which is so necessary on the stage.

In Germany they never applaud till the end of the act, or very seldom interrupt the actor to testify to him the admiralion Le inspires. The Germans look upon it as a sort of barbarism to disturb, by tumultuous marks of approbation, the

deep emotion with which they love to be penetrated in silence. But this is an additional difficulty for the actors; for it requires an astonishing force of genius to dispense, in declaiming, with the encouragement of the public. In an art which is entirely of emotion, assemblies of spectators communicate an allpowerful electricity which nothing can supply.

From an habitual exercise in the practice of the art, it may happen that a good actor, in repeating a performance, shall pass over the same tracks, and employ the same methods, without the spectators animating him anew; but the first inspiration almost always proceeded from them. A singular contråst deserves to be remarked. In those fine arts, of which the creation is solitary and reflective, we lose whatever is natural when we think of the public, and it is self-love only that makes us think of it. In those which are of sudden impression, above all in declamation, the noise of the plaudits acts upon the soul like the sound of military music. This animating sound makes the blood circulate more swiftly, and it is not cold vanity that is satisfied by it.

When a man of genius appears in France, in whatever line, he attains almost always to a degree of perfection without example; for he unites the boldness that makes him deviate from the common road, with good taste, which it is of so much importance to preserve when the originality of talent does not. suffer from it. It therefore seems to me that Talma' may be

1 "François Joseph Talma, an eminent French tragedian, was born in Paris, January 15, 1763. His father, who was a dentist, went to England shortly after the birth of his son, and practised his profession some years in London. At nine years of age young Talma returned to France, and was placed in a school at Chaillot, which was kept by Monsieur Lamarguière, a great admirer of the drama, who delighted to discover and encourage a similar taste in any of his pupils. A year after Talma had joined the school, he was entrusted with a part in an old tragedy, called 'Simois, Fils de Tamerlane,' which Monsieur Lamarguière had selected for performance by his scholars; and, so deeply did the future tragedian enter into the feeling of the character, that he burst into tears at the recital of the sorrows of the hero, whose brother he represented. At the age of twelve he wrote a little drama, in the composition of which he further developed his knowledge of the stage. He again visited London, and returned a

cited as a model of boldness and moderation, of nature and of dignity. He possesses all the secrets of the different arts; his attitudes recall the fine statues of antiquity; his draperie, when he least thinks about it, is folded in all his motions, as if he had had time to arrange it with the greatest care. The ex

second time to Paris at the latter end of the year 1781, when he commenced the study of logic in the Collège Mazarin. In 1783, he made a coup d'essai at the Théâtre de Doyen, in the character of Seide, in the tragedy of 'Mahomet.' A council of friends, appointed by himself, to judge of the performance, pronounced it a failure. 'He had not le feu sacré.' Talma deferred to this unfavorable opinion, and quietly returned to the study of his father's profession; but a few years afterwards, the same friends were called upon to reverse their judgment and confess their mistake. On the 21st of November, 1787, he made his debût at the Théâtre Français, and in 1789, he created a great sensation by his performance of Charles IX. At the commencement of the French Revolution, he nearly fell a prey to a severe nervous disorder. On his recovery and the retirement of Larive, Talma became the principal tragic actor. He reformed the costume of the stage, and first played the part of Titus in a Roman toga. During the reign of Napoleon, he enjoyed the emperor's friendship; and was no less honored and esteemed by Louis XVIII. In 1825, he published some 'Reflections' on his favorite art; and on the 11th of June, 1826, appeared on the stage for the last time, in the part of Charles VI. During his last illness, the audiences of the Théâtre Français every evening called for an official account of the state of his health previously to the commencement of the performances. He died on the 19th of October following, and was buried in the cemetery of Père la Chaise, in the presence of an immense crowd. MM. Arnault, Jouy, and Lafour pronounced orations over his grave. The Théâtre Français remained closed for three evenings, and the Opéra Comique and Odéon were also closed on the day of his funeral. The actors of the Brussels Theatre (of which company he was an associate) wore mourning for him forty days, and a variety of honors were paid to his memory at the principal theatres throughout France and the Netherlands. Talma is said to have created seventy-one characters, among the most popular of which were those of Orestes, Edipus, Nero, Manlius, Cæsar, Cinna, Augustus, Coriolanus, Hector, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Leicester, Sylla, Regulus, Danville (in 'L'Ecole des Veillards'), Leonidas, Charles VI, and Henry VIII. He has been accused, remarks one of his biographers, of having spoken the verse of tragedy as though it were prose ; but this avoidance of the jingle of rhyme was one of the greatest improvements which he introduced upon the French stage. In person he was about the middle height, square built, and with a most expressive and noble countenance. His voice was exceedingly fine ard powerful, his attitudes dignified and graceful. In private life he was distinguished for his manly frankness, his kind disposition, and unaffected manners. He spoke English perfectly, and was a great admirer of England and her institutions

pression of his countenance, that of his eye, ought to be studied by all painters. Sometimes he enters with his eyes only half open, and, on a sudden, feeling makes rays of light spring from them which seem to illuminate the whole theatre.

The sound of his voice agitates from the moment he speaks, before even the sense of the words he utters can have excited any emotion. Where any descriptive poetry accidentally finds place in a tragedy, he has brought out its beauties with as much feeling as if he were Pindar himself reciting the odes of his own composition. Others have need of time to excite emotion, and they do well to take time for the purpose; but in the voice of this man there is I know not what magic which, at its first accents, awakens all the sympathies of the heart. The charm of music, of painting, of sculpture, of poetry, and above all, of the language of the soul, these are the means he employs to develop in his auditor all the force of the generous or of the terrible passions.

What knowledge of the human heart he displays in his manner of conceiving his parts! he becomes their second author by his accents and his physiognomy. When Edipus relates to Jocasta how he has killed Laius, without knowing him, his recital begins thus: J'étais jeune et superbe.' Most actors, before him, thought it necessary to act the word superbe, and used to draw up their heads as a sign of it; Talma, who feels that all the recollections of the proud Edipus begin to affect him in the nature of remorse, pronounces in a timid voice these words, calculated to remind him of a confidence that he has lost. Phorbas arrives from Corinth at the moment when Edipus has first conceived doubts respecting his birth; he demands a private conference with him. Other actors, before Talma, made haste to turn to their followers, and dismiss them with an air of majesty; Talma remains with his eyes fixed upon Phorbas: he cannot lose him from his sight, and only makes

He was the friend and guest of John Kemble, and was present in Covent Garden Theatre when that great actor took his leave of the stage."English Cylopædia.)-Ed.

"I was young and proud.”