and Redmond Tape-were all different persons. There is a lasting power of conquest in the art that understands itself and goes straight to its purpose. Clarke made De Boots and Toodle, and other such eccentric characters, natural and probable human creatures, rather than figments of a grotesque fancy. As represented by him, those parts suggested a background of experience and the versimilitude of daily life. He was happy in the introduction of delicate points of business, which served to augment and more clearly define the texture of the parts, without, however, in any way changing it. He acted with the ease of second nature, that makes the observer oblivious of the effort and skill which alone could produce such effects of illusion and enjoyment. Nothing more ludicrous has been heard upon the stage than the tone in which Clarke, as De Boots, mentioned the approach of "that man who has such a lively interest in my nose," or the tone of self-opinionated complacency with which, as Toodle, the comedian said: "He went to his grave, and died there." In lace-work the most delicate threads count- and Clarke's mechanism was always lace. The period in which Booth lived was rich in manifestations of splendid talent upon the stage, especially in comedy — Mathews, Burton, Owens, Blake, Gilbert, Hackett, Burke, Jefferson, Warren, Sothern, Brougham, Buckstone, Clarke, Lewis, Toole, Rowe, Florence, Holland, Davidge, Le Moyne, Wallack, Raymond, Setchell, Stoddart, Beckett, and Mark Smith being conspicuous in the brilliant throng through which he moved, a dark, sad, stately figure, shadow-like in the sun.

Never until Henry Irving arose did Booth meet with

a rival. He had eclipsed Forrest. He had nothing to fear from either Davenport, Brooke, Murdoch, Adams, Dillon, Marshall, Wallack, Fechter, Lawrence Barrett, or John McCullough. He stood alone in the public favour, and for many years he had the realm of the tragic drama entirely at his command. He was assailed, indeed, but he was never shaken. Not till Henry Irving came to America did Booth ever have reason to understand that his star had passed its meridian and was beginning to descend. There is an inevitable fate in such changes. The great actor passes away, with his time. The celebrity, whoever he may be, is fortunate who does not linger on the scene after his period has gone. One of the sweetest of Booth's characteristics was the gentle patience, the cheerful resignation, with which he accepted the new order of things. He did not defer to the new lights of art. He did not believe in the new school. The tradition of his father and of Edmund Kean was his law. Yet, if the public was drifting away from that old faith, he was content to be left alone at its altar. He allied with himself the intellectual, indomitable Lawrence Barrett and the gentle and lovely Modjeska, and he stood fast, to the end, by the old-fashioned standard of poetic tragedy, the grand manner, the elocutionary not less than the mimetic art. But he did not wish to obtrude himself or to insist on his views. The periods of his engagements grew shorter and shorter, and little by little he relaxed his grasp upon the stage and went into retirement. The death of Lawrence Barrett, March 20, 1891, gave him a great shock and much intensified his inclination to withdraw into private life. I never heard him, however,

speak a harsh word about any actor or about the public. His day, as well he knew, had been very brilliant. He had reigned in splendour. He was willing to accept the evening twilight, when it came, and be at peace. He was on the stage for nearly forty-two years - from September 18, 1849, till April 4, 1891, and, steadily to the last, he was the devoted, unselfish, gentle apostle of acting and of actors, and, steadily to the last, although his enthusiasm had waned and his powers had begun to fail, the community followed him with respect, and even with affectionate homage.

After his relinquishment of Booth's theatre, Booth never again participated in theatrical management. All his labours in that field were over and done with, by the time he came to forty years. During the last twenty years of his life he was simply a travelling star. He did not act continuously, but allowed himself intervals of retirement and rest, residing for the most part in New York, though for a while in Boston, but repairing now and then to a country home that he had established at Cos-Cob, not far from Stamford, Connecticut, and later to Newport. At Cos-Cob, on August 17, 1875, while driving in company with Dr. Kellogg, of the Poughkeepsie Lunatic Asylum, - author of a thoughtful and valuable treatise on the insanity of some of Shakespeare's characters, a good companion book to Dr. Connolly's exposition of the insanity of Hamlet, — he was thrown from his carriage, hurled against a telegraph pole, and severely hurt.1 His left arm was broken and two

1 News of that disaster reached me about midnight, at the N.Y. Tribune, in the form of an abrupt announcement that Booth was dead. Inquiry presently ascertained that this report was rumour. Direct commu