harsh, now deep, hollow, and reverberating-her enraptured auditors likening it in effect to distant thunder.

To the dramatists who sought to supply her with new parts Rachel was the occasion of much chagrin and perplexity. After accepting Scribe's "Adrienne Lecouvreur" she rejected it absolutely, only to resume it eagerly, however, when she learnt that the leading character was to be undertaken by Mdlle. Rose Chéri. His "Chandelier" having met with success, Rachel applied to De Musset for a play; she was offered, it seems, "Les Caprices de Marianne;" but meantime the poet's "Bettine" failed, and the actress distrustfully turned away from him. An undertaking to appear in the "Medea" of Legouvé landed her in a protracted lawsuit. The courts condemned her in damages to the amount of 200 francs for every day she delayed playing the part of Medea after the date fixed upon by the management for the commencement of the rehearsals of the tragedy. She paid nothing, however, for the management failed to fix any such date. M. Legouvé was only avenged in the success his play obtained, in a translated form, at the hands of Madame Ristori. In lieu of "Medea," Rachel produced "Rosemonde," a tragedy by M. Latour de St. Ybars, which failed completely. Other plays written for her were the "Valéria" of MM. Lecroix and Maquet, in which she personated two characters : the Empress Messalina, and her half-sister Lysisca, a courtesan; the "Diane" of M. Augier, an imitation of Victor Hugo's "Marion Delorme;" "Lady Tartuffe," a comedy by Madame de Girardin; and "La Czariné," by M. Scribe. She appeared also in certain of the characters originally contrived for Mdlle. Mars, such as the heroines of Dumas' "Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle" and the "Louise de Lignerolles" of MM. Legouvé and Dinaux, and La Tisbe in Victor Hugo's "Angelo."

The classical drama of France has not found much favour in England. We are all, perhaps, apt to think with Thackeray disrespectfully of the "old tragedies-well-nigh dead, and full time tooin which half a dozen characters appear, and shout sonorous Alexandrines for half a dozen hours;" or we are disposed to agree with Mr. Matthew Arnold, that, their drama being fundamentally insufficient both in substance and in form, the French, with all their gifts, have not, as we have, an adequate form for poetry of the highest class. Those who remember Rachel, however, can testify that she breathed the most earnest life into the frigid remains of Racine and Corneille, relumed them with Promethean heat, and showed them to be instinct with the truest and intensest passion.

When she occupied the scene, there could be no thought of the old artificial times of hair-powder and rouge, periwigs and patches, in connection with the characters she represented. Phèdre and Hermione, Pauline and Camille, interpreted by her genius, became as real and natural, warm and palpitating, as Constance or Lady Macbeth could have been when played by Mrs. Siddons, or as Juliet when impersonated by Miss O'Neill. Before Rachel came, it had been thought that the new romantic drama of MM. Hugo and Dumas, because of its greater truth to nature, had given the coup de grâce to the old classic plays; but the public, at her bidding, turned gladly from the spasms and the rant of " Angelo " and "Angèle," "Antony" and "Hernani," to the old-world stories, the formal tragedies of the seventeenth-century poet-dramatists of France. The actress fairly witched her public. There was something of magic in her very presence upon the scene. None could fail to be impressed by the aspect of the slight, pallid woman, who seemed to gain height by reason of her slenderness, who moved towards her audience with such simple natural majesty, who wore and conducted her fluent classical draperies with such admirable and perfect grace. It was as though she had lived always so attired in tunic, peplum, and pallium—had known no other dress,-not that she was of modern times playing at antiquity. The physical traditions of her race found expression or incarnation in her. Her face was of refined Judaical character, the thin nose slightly curved, the lower lip a trifle full, but the mouth exquisitely shaped, and the teeth small, white, and even. The profuse black-brown hair was smoothed and braided from the broad, low, white, somewhat overhanging brow, beneath which in shadow the keen black eyes flashed out their lightnings, or glowed luridly like coals at a red heat. Her gestures were remarkable for their dignity and appropriateness; the long, slight arms lent themselves surprisingly to gracefulness; the beautifully formed hands, with the thin tapering fingers and the pink filbert nails, seemed always tremblingly on the alert to add significance or accent to her speeches. But there was eloquence in her very silence and complete repose. She could relate a whole history by her changes of facial expression. She possessed special powers of self-control; she was under subjection to both art and nature when she seemed to abandon herself the most absolutely to the whirlwind of her passion. There were no undue excesses of posture, movement, or tone. Her attitudes, it was once said, were those of "a Pythoness cast in bronze." Her voice thrilled and awed at its first note, it was so strangely deep, so solemnly melodious, until, stirred by passion as it were, it became

thick and husky in certam of its tones; but it was always audible, aruculate, and teling, whether sunk to a whisper or raised clamorDusi. Ser decimation was superb, it, as critics reported, there had beer decime in this matter during those later years of her life to vich my own acquaintance with Rachel's acting is confined. I saw her first at the Franças in 1549, and I was present at her last performance at the St. James's Theatre in 1853, having in the interval witnessed her assumption of certain of her most admired characters. And it may be true, too, that, still resembling Kean, she was more and more disposed as the years passed, to make "points;" to slur over the less important scenes, and reserve herself for a grand outburst or a vehement climax, sacrificing thus many of the subtler graces, refinements, and graduations of elocution for which she had once been famous. To English ears, it was hardly an offence that she broke up the sing-song of the rhymed tirades of the old plays and gave them a more natural sound, regardless of the traditional methods of speech of Clairon. Le Kain, and other of the great French players of the past. Less success than had been looked for attended Rachel's invasion of the repertory of Mdlle. Mars, an actress so idolised by the Parisians that her sixty years and great portliness of form were not thought hindrances to her personation of the youthful heroines of modern comedy and drama. But Rachel's fittest occupation, and her greatest triumphs, were found in the classical poetic plays. She, perhaps, intellectualised too much the creations of Hugo, Dumas, and Scribe; gave them excess of majesty. histrionic style was too exalted and ideal for the conventional characters of the drama of her own time : it was even said of her that she could not speak its prose properly or tolerably. She disliked the hair-powder necessary to Adrienne Lecouvreur and Gabrielle de Belle-Isle, although her beauty, for all its severity, did not lose picturesqueness in the costumes of the time of Louis XV. As Gabrielle she was more girlish and gentle, pathetic and tender, than was her wont, while the signal fervour of her speech addressed to Richelieu, beginning "Vous mentez, Monsieur le Duc," stirred the audience to the most excited applause.

Rachel was seen upon the stage for the last time at Charleston, on the 17th December, 1856. She played Adrienne Lecouvreur. She had been tempted to America by the prospect of extravagant profits. It had been dinned into her ears that Jenny Lind, by thirty-eight performances in America, had realised 1,700,000 francs. Why might not she, Rachel, receive as much? And then, she was eager to quit Puris. There had been strange worship there of Madame Ristori,

even in the rejected part of Medea! But already Rachel's health was in a deplorable state. Her constitution, never very strong, had suffered severely from the cruel fatigues, the incessant exertions, she had undergone. It may be, too, that the deprivations and sufferings of her childhood now made themselves felt as over-due claims that could be no longer denied or deferred. She forced herself to play, in fulfilment of her engagement, but she was languid, weak, emaciated; she coughed incessantly, her strength was gone; she was dying slowly but certainly of phthisis. And she appeared before an audience that applauded her, it is true, but cared nothing for Racine and Corneille, knew little of the French language, and were urgent that she should sing the "Marseillaise" as she had sung it in 1848! It was forgotten, or it was not known in America, that the actress had long since renounced revolutionary sentiments to espouse the cause of the Second Empire. She performed all her more important characters, however, at New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Nor was the undertaking commercially disappointing, if it did not wholly satisfy expectation. She returned to France possessed of nearly 300,000 francs as her share of the profits of her forty-two performances in the United States; but she returned to die. The winter of 1856 she passed at Cairo. She returned to France in the spring of 1857, but her physicians forbade her to remain long in Paris. In September she moved again to the South, finding her last retreat in the villa Sardou, at Cannet, a little village in the environs of Cannes. She lingered to the 3rd of January 1858. The Théâtre Français closed its doors when news arrived of her death, and again on the day of her funeral. The body was embalmed and brought to Paris for interment in the cemetery of Père la Chaise, the obsequies being performed in accordance with the Jewish rites. The most eminent of the authors and actors of France were present, and funeral orations were delivered by MM. Jules Janin, Bataille, and Auguste Maquet. Victor Hugo was in exile, or, as Janin announced, the author of "Angelo" would not have withheld the tribute of his eulogy upon the sad occasion. By her professional exertions Rachel was said to have amassed a sum of £100,000 sterling.

Dr. Véron, who, with French frankness, wrote of the actress in her lifetime, doubted whether he had secured for her the more of censure or of esteem. But he urged that her early life should be taken into account: "Il faut se rappeler d'où elle est partie, où elle est arrivée, pour lui tenir compte du long chemin semé de ronces et d'épines, plein de périls et d'abîmes, que dans son enfance et sa première jeunesse elle eut à parcourir presque sans guides, sans le nécessaire

et sans appui. A côté de quelques mauvais sentiments qu'elle réprime, restes impurs d'une vie errante à travers d'épaisses broussailles et de pernicieux marais, on trouve en elle de nobles instincts, le sentiment des grandes et belles choses, une passion ardente pour les plaisirs de l'esprit, une intelligence supérieure, une aimable philosophie, et toutes les séductions d'une élégance et d'une distinction naturelles."

DUTTON COOK..