our gentle and amiable friend, and universally admired writer and revered countryman, Mr. Washington Irving, mention what in his latest letter to me, he remarked, referring to his many singular and particular reminiscences of the stage, within the current century-"I have seen the Ballet of Hamlet gravely danced at Vienna." Had Mr. Adams happened to see such a desecration, when "a looker on in Vienna," it would have recalledif it did not realize to him-the reflections of Hamlet in the grave-yard. "To what base uses we may return, Horatio. Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it stopping a bung-hole?"-because then and there was one of the most exquisite poetic gems, ever germinated by dramatic genius in the brain of the Intellectual Minerva and devoted to the special service of Melpomene, debased, perverted, and sacrificed to subserve the mazy and meretricious "poetry of motion,” a province peculiar to the fantastic Terpsichore.

I should perhaps in this connexion note that the particular letter of Mr. Irving, from which the foregoing sentence is extracted, is dated "New York, April 17, 1848;"-for the reason that, this eminent author had done me the favor to open a correspondence with me, "Jan. 3, 1837," in special reference to his "Knickerbocker's History of New York," when I, in a private and friendly way, had sought his opinion of its susceptibility of dramatic effect. In 1847 I had mentioned to Mr. Irving socially and

incidentally, that I had been in the practice of carefully noting and recording in a manuscript volume kept for that special purpose, the performance and apparent conception of every actor of distinction whom I had seen in the character of Hamlet, both in our country and in England, from 1816 to 1845; which our venerable friend Mr. Adams had borrowed for perusal, and, when returning it, had written me another and particularly interesting and instructive letter; first thanking me for what he had the indulgence to call "the privilege of perusing " such notes, and then, "asking my acceptance of a few scattered leaves, containing his own remarks upon Othello, Romeo and Juliet, and Lear, which had been originally written to a friend who thought them worthy of publication with his consent, &c.," and at same time communicating to me in that letter, his own first impressions of the London, and the effect of an incident he witnessed on the Paris stage, in the time of Louis XVIth.

Mr. Irving, too, complimented me by soliciting my "Notes upon the Actors of Hamlet" for perusal. I sent him the volume during the autumn of 1847, and he did not return it until the following spring, (April 17,) when he premised in his letter—

"I have detained your manuscript notes an unconscionable time, but I could not help it. I wished to read them attentively, for they are remarkably suggestive, and not to be read in a hurry," &c., &c.—See letter, on a subsequent page.

Upon examining thereafter my returned manuscript, I discovered that, as another eminent literary friend, Mr. James Fenimore Cooper, had done, Mr. Irving, when struck by my graphic record of the personal peculiarities of some well-remembered Actor, had stopped occasionally, and upon the margin, favored me, by adding his own autographic annotations, in "lead-pencillings by the way."

About the middle of October, 1841, the late Edmund Simpson, then Manager of the Park theatre, New York, referring to the prevailing interest taken by the play-going community in my novel conceits, as manifested respecting the character of Hamlet in my then recently transpired correspondence with the Hon. John Quincy Adams, and which being transcribed and published throughout the land, was attracting great attention from critical admirers of Shakespeare, suggested, urged, and finally persuaded me to impersonate my own conception and as soon as six days thereafter, when my benefit was appointed, assuring me that "my performance under the circumstances could not fail to attract greatly." The celebrated singer Mrs. Wood (ci-devant Miss Paton, the renowned prima donna of Covent Garden and Drury Lane, London) then an immense favorite at New York, as an inducement and encouragement to me, generously volunteered to act Ophelia, a part she had repeatedly played when Edmund Kean acted Hamlet at Drury Lane.

So far as Shakespeare's text went, I felt sure I

could become perfect in it; but, when I reflected that having never before thought of acting Hamlet, there was no time to acquire by practice, which alone makes perfect on the stage, the requisite ease of a gentleman, the dignity of a prince, appropriate action and flexibility of voice, in order to give proper variety to the vehement passions, weight to the declamatory and poignancy to the spirited and satirical portions; I became frightfully nervous at the responsibility I had undertaken, and was vexed with my own want of forethought and circumspection. For

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

It is true that I had within a month or two previously been performing King Lear (some dozen times in Philadelphia and New York) and had acquired a certain confidence in the power and compass of my voice, and in the accompaniment of natural and expressive action and attitude in the possionate scenes; but then the physical training for Lear included little or nothing towards the adaption of my person for representing Hamlet:—

"Our strange garments cleave not to their mould,
But with the aid of use,"

Consequently I passed six days of continuous nervous excitement, which made my system restless at night and my faculties sleepless the greater portion of each, and until that of my performance, when in

the presence of my audience, I endured too a constant and violent palpitation of the heart. Nevertheless I said I would go on for Hamlet—

“What! a soldier, and afeard?”

and I felt ashamed afterward to say, "I am afraid!" John Kemble, the greatest Hamlet of his day, is reported to have declared that he studied Hamlet seven years before he acted it; and, though he had then played it more than thirty years, every time he repeated it, something new in it struck him. I remembered that I felt alarmed for my own temerity, but was resolved to do my best at such short notice of requirement, and deprecate public exactness. I headed the play-bill of the day with a short apology for my attempt to impersonate Hamlet, because, though my sock was not, my buskin was new, and my habitual study of characters had been very systematic and conscientious. At that time, I was unsophisticated enough to presume that every one who might go to see me act Hamlet would be a competent critic, and, that such at least as had curiosity excited by reading my letter to Mr. Adams, would expect of me some good acting, as well as novelty, nicety, and undeniable correctness of perception of the poet, philosopher, and dramatist, to whose tragedies I generally had riveted my most serious attention, and whose Hamlet especially, though I had analysed it, I now approached a representation of with a profound awe and reverence,