the exquisite playfulness, the uniform grace, the passing malice, and lasting kindness of heart, are her own creation. On the admirable foundation of Shakspeare's genius she has reared up a new structure of her own, which forms the Corinthian capitals of the enchanting edifice.

But this does not diminish-on the contrary, it adds to -her power of delineating the graver and sadder passions; the frequent bursts of tragic emotion which she displays are only rendered more powerful on that account. She throws off the tragedy queen more readily than Mrs Siddons; emerges from tears like the sun from the clouds, with more ease than Miss O'Neil. The greater is the effect of her terrible pathetic powers, when she does put them forth; for they approach more closely to the varying changes the mingled joy and sorrow of real life. Her object appears to be

"By winning words to conquer willing hearts,

And make persuasion do the work of fear."

The

In majesty of figure she is not equal to Mrs Siddonsin regularity of features to Miss O'Neil; but in the combination of beauty with genius, of originality with taste, of energy with grace, of sportive playfulness with impassioned feeling, she is altogether without a rival now on the stage, and on a level with the greatest performers that ever adorned the British theatre. Above all, she is perfectly feminine alike in her conception and her movements. most vehement emotion, the lightest playfulness, never make her forget the respect due to her sex. Grace and delicacy seem to be inherent in her very nature-they have been imprinted as indelibly on her mind as on her figure. Nor are the sterner and graver feelings wanting. Her acting combines, in a remarkable degree, masculine strength of understanding in the conception of character, with feminine grace and delicacy in their execution; and her countenance lightens up alternately, in the animated scenes, with the fascination of love, the glance of indignation, and the vehemence of despair.

Miss Faucit's characters clearly have been the result of deep and solitary meditation. There is no imitation about her. She is neither cast in the Kemble mould, nor has she been formed in the Macready school. Like all persons of

powerful and original genius, she takes counsel from her own thoughts alone, and educes from their varied conceptions the phantasmagoria of beauty which she presents to her audience. Her mind is deeply embued with poetry. She throws herself into the soul of the composer of the characters which she personates ; and, casting his thoughts again in the mould of her own imagination, brings forth a creation more charming than any single genius, how great soever, could be capable of producing. The study of a single character, we should conceive, must, with her, be the work of nearly as much time and thought as their original conception by the dramatic poet. Nevertheless, her creations are mainly founded, as all perfect works of art must be, on the observation of nature. The ideal is, with her, founded on its only sure basis, the real. She has evidently drawn and modelled from the life. It is this which gives her representations their principal charm, and brings them home at once to the hearts of the audience. The enraptured bursts of applause which so frequently reward her greater efforts, demonstrate this. But hers is no slavish imitation of nature. It is nature seen through the eyes of genius which she presents, like the charming paintings of Claude Lorraine, which, true to reality in every particular, yet exhibit, on the whole, a combination more perfect than any scene, how exquisite soever in the actual world, could produce.

This great actress evidently aims at elevating her noble art to its loftiest, most chastened, most purifying object. Endowed by nature with the most attractive graces of her sex, she is yet content sometimes to forego their exhibition in their lighter and more winning form, to personate the more serious and elevated characters, in which courage rises superior to danger, and duty gains the victory over weakness. She feels of what the histrionic art is capable--what a mighty engine, for good or for evil, its powers of fascination qualify it to become. She has taken her part accordingly, and taken it in the right spirit. Her lot has been cast in an age of transition, perhaps corruption, in which, under the cravings of a people insatiate for something new, the drama has been wellnigh turned aside from its higher objects, and converted into the mere handmaid of singing and dancing.

She is bending her great powers to restore it to its more elevated destiny-to render it the means of moral elevation, the instrument of general good. It is doubtful if any efforts can do this; but if any one can effect it, it is herself.

Miss Faucit's Antigone is one of the most chaste of her personations, but not the not the most likely to be generally popular. Her conception of the character perfectly conveys the idea of Sophocles. It is not the heroine braving death from the physical contempt of danger, which she exhibits like Zenobia or Joan of Arc; it is a gentle but affectionate sister discharging a sacred domestic duty, under a full sense of its danger, but a resolute determination to incur it. It is the resignation of the Christian martyr, rather than the spirit of the heathen Amazon, which she depicts. Nothing can be more touching than the representation she gives of the heartrending horror which overpowers Antigone, when, deserted in the extremity of her distress by all the world, she hears the dreadful fate which awaits her of being entombed alive in the rock. But the uniformity of the emotion which the piece requires is not favourable to the exhibition of her varied powers. And, indeed, although the genius of this accomplished actress has thus, after the lapse of two thousand three hundred years, responded to that of Sophocles, yet that is not the native. bent of her mind, nor, perhaps, the line in which she is destined to attain the highest eminence. She is a child of the soil; she is essentially national in her ideas. Her mind was born at Stratford-on-Avon; it was bred in the Forest of Arden; it emerged to the world beside the tomb of all the Capulets. Heart and soul she is Shakspearian. Her first ambition appears to have been to personate only the tragic heroines of that great dramatist, and she made her earliest appearances in them accordingly on the London stage. Subsequently, however, her ardent admiration for her favourite bard appears to have led her to attempt the personation of Shakspeare's lighter and more playful characters; and in them she is unrivalled. The power thus acquired of combining the graces of elegant, or rather bewitching comedy, with the passions of tragedy, is what now constitutes her great and peculiar excellence. It is what makes her Juliet or Pauline so attractive. They

exhibit, alternately, the charm of fascinating character and the pathos of tragic event.

If Miss Helen Faucit need fear no competitor on the English, she has a contest worthy of herself to maintain on the French stage. The talents of MADEMOISELLE RACHEL are so great, and yet so peculiar, that they seem to stand forth in the brightest relief beside the attractive graces of her fascinating rival. They are as opposite as "ebon and ivory." Thorwaldsen's beautiful cameos of Day and Night might pass for emblems of their mental characters. Miss Faucit can be at times as deep as midnight; but the sun rises so soon that it does not form her prevailing character. The dark and the terrible constitute Mademoiselle Rachel's

general turn of mind. Their step, air, and walk on the stage are as dissimilar as their countenances, powers, and turn of mind. Mademoiselle Rachel has none of the versatility of Miss Faucit. She could not alternately captivate in Rosalind, melt in Belvidera, and thrill with horror in the last scenes of Juliet. She is more stately and mournful. Her mind, cast in a sterner mould, fraught with more vehement feelings, is susceptible chiefly of the stronger passions. In them she is supremely great. Though endowed by nature with the power of attracting admiration, she is not powerful in the delineation of the tender affections. But in the vehement and impassioned the peculiar character of her mind is apparent. She feels she is qualified to awaken love; and, satisfied of that, she has little patience for its lighter moods. She disdains its levities, its inconstancy, its caprice. She passes at once over its earlier stages. She seizes it, not when it treads on flowers, but when it is falling into the abyss. If it be true, as Byron says, that love is"A chase of idle hopes and fears,

Begun in folly, closed in tears."

she has no patience for the folly-she makes straight to the tears. No one ever excelled, few have equalled her in the representation of the dreadful agony of the mind, when one overpowering passion has concentrated all its energies, and the last beams of hope have sunk in the hopelessness of despair. The inimitable power with which she delineated that state of mind, in the characters of Phèdre and Hermione, at St James's Theatre, last summer, can never be forgotten

by those who witnessed them, and have secured for this great actress a durable place in the pantheon of English as as well as Continental fame.

Of all the racking and distracting passions of the mind in woman, jealousy is the one which Mademoiselle Rachel represents with the greatest power. In its delineation she is decidedly superior to either Mrs Siddons, Miss O'Neil, or Miss Faucit. We hope it is not the case-we are sure one so gifted has less reason than most of her sex to fear rivalry-but we should almost be tempted to believe, from the inimitable power and fearful truthfulness of her delineation of that dreadful passion, in the Sultana, in the noble tragedy of Bajazet, that she was drawing from the lifethat she expressed what she had herself felt. The fiery torrent seems to have penetrated every vein and fibre of her frame. All her limbs quiver; every muscle trembles, as if the burning iron had convulsed the body, and was entering into the soul. Genius, and that of the very highest kind, was here at once apparent. Its effects were manifest in the thunders of applause which it at once drew forth, even from the courtly dames and reserved daughters of England's nobility. You could not say that she was inspired by the poet; she rather seemed to have inspired him. On the grand conceptions and stately Alexandrines of the immortal dramatist, she had superadded a world of her own creation, so vehement, so entrancing, yet so true to nature, that the audience were hurried along as by an impetuous torrent, and forgot the verses and even the play in the intense interest excited by the performer.

But

Mademoiselle Rachel has not received any remarkable physical advantages from nature, excepting in the conformation of her person. Her figure, finely formed, is tall and commanding her hair and complexion dark, but not peculiarly fine her countenance, though in the highest degree expressive, can hardly be said to be beautiful. never in a human being was the triumph of mind over matter more signally evinced. She is tragedy personified; as fitly nearly as Mrs Siddons, she might sit with the dagger and the bowl by her side. Her dark eyebrows and sable locks, the sad and melancholy expression of her visage, the stern and relentless glance of her eyes-all bespeak the concen