ment of Antony, Booth rendered the utmost justice. The darker shades of the character were judiciously repressed. In the prophesy of war the glowing passion of the actor attained to inspiration. That is the difficult climax, which overtops the climax of the assassination. Booth was noble in it, and also in the delivery of the funeral oration. Better elocution has not been heard— whether considered as to its method, or as a spontaneous expression of the varying emotions of the stormy heart and the wily mind. In execution Booth's Antony was wonderfully symmetrical. Antony is a great man in the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra: in Julius Cæsar his deeper nature has not yet been awakened. He is a picturesque demagogue, and as such the actor portrayed him.

Booth took great pleasure in Fulius Cæsar and after the alliance was formed with Lawrence Barrett, in 1887, he made it a prominent feature in his repertory. The tragedy is one that stirs the imagination with inspiring thought of some of the grandest historic figures that ever genius enshrined in the amber of poetry. It dazzles the mental vision with shapes of antique majesty, and it thrills the pulse of sympathetic appreciation with strains of high and matchless eloquence. Those great lessons with which it is so richly freighted, the lesson of the value of liberty, and the still greater lesson of the predominance of an inexorable morality of purpose in the vast scheme of human advancement, are taught by it, with potent authority and invincible force. The splendour of Roman civilisation, with its royal aspects of stateliness and its marked contrasts of aristocratic pomp and plebeian servility, military prevalence and popular

resentment, is displayed by it and made actual. The mature repose and autumnal beauty of Booth's mind. and art were conspicuously shown in it. In Brutus he was at the flood of dignity and sweetness, self-command, and calm dominance over all the facts of life and death. He not only embodied the character, but by means of that performance he signified his wide range of dramatic faculty, his unerring artistic instinct, and his capacity of self-repression as an actor. The man of thought, if he attract at all, must attract by his personal quality of charm-by what he is, and not by what he does. In this posture personality transcends action. Even in his anger Brutus maintains the poise of an almost stoical nature. He never acts with the impetuosity of impulse, but always with the deliberation of reason. He is sweet in temperament, tender in heart, decorous in demeanour, grave, stately, thoughtful, and calm. He does not startle with emphatic and telling points. His range of mental vision is so wide that he can sympathise with the view of his antagonist as well as with his own view and the deeds of such a man must necessarily be judicial and neither impulsive nor romantic. Such a man, indeed, is more a spirit than a body—abstract, elusive, rarified, cold. To quench his fire, and to suffuse his embodiment of "the noblest Roman of them all" with a sad grace and mournful pensiveness was, on the part of Booth, to sacrifice instant popular effect for the sake of truth. The sweetness and beauty of his embodiment of Brutus were not at once felt; yet, when all was over, they were remembered. Just so it was, when, years ago, in London, Fulius Cæsar was acted, with John Philip Kemble as

Brutus and Charles Young as Cassius. Young captured everybody at first, but after a few nights the majesty of Kemble, vindicating the humanity and poetry that are in Brutus, altogether eclipsed him. Booth possessed that majestic quality—that fine solidity of character, "four-square to opposition," and the essential tenderness which appertains to a great heart that has greatly suffered. All that one reads of Kemble's slow, stately, massive walk, in Brutus, as contrasted with Young's quick, nervous, restless pace, as Cassius, was realised in Booth's demeanour in that character, when acting with Barrett. The part requires declamatory treatment at certain points, and the golden purity of Booth's English speaking gave it consummate beauty of expression. His supreme moment as Brutus was that of the apparition

a moment when even the iron compos

ure of the stoic is shattered; but nothing in the performance was more distinctly and convincingly indicative of the actor's power of impersonation than the predominant look of his eyes, in the quarrel scene. The attribute of authority belongs essentially to Brutus, and Booth made it impressively obvious. Such a look, doubtless, that of Betterton was, when he said, “For your life you durst not." Such a look that of Kynaston was, when, as King Henry the Fourth, he said to Hotspur, "Send us your prisoners." No one who watched the varying expression of Booth's countenance as Brutus, or noted the music of his voice, can forget that extraordinary embodiment.