than I have seen come and pass away-no changes from sorrow to joy more rapid-no events more doubtful than I have seen brought to a termination. If tragedy lived and walked in the world under my eyes, it would be singular if I could not personify it. I have witnessed sad histories -I have supped full of horrors;'-was itpossible that I missed taking an impression from them."

When he spoke of those times, the painful recollection of past things came into his countenance. He generally kept a profound silence for some moments after he had ceased his allusion to the terrible events that, making Europe ring from side to side, and tracking their course in blood, have become now as if they had never been.

"In the course of my studies, while keeping close to nature, I did not trust to my own conception of her conduct under the circumstances. I sought collateral aid. Without hard study, the proper conception of the part is not to be attained-we make false pictures. I asked myself how an individual, under each particular contingency, would demean himself in conduct, gesture, and movement. I proved and matured my own conceptions; I proceeded to try their merit by some living standard, that enabled me to judge with tolerable correctness of the proper degree due to it. I paid very little attention to the mode in which preceding actors had carried out the part on our stage in succession, one copying from the other. I searched for some example as approximative as possible to the naked fact, by which to test my own judgment. Every variety of passion, with the action naturally attaching to its development, is continually exhibiting. I had only to hunt for an opportunity of its display. In a crowded city like Paris, enough was quickly found to strengthen or alter my preconceived ideas-enough to afford me the means of correcting error, although not precisely developed in the mode I might finally adopt. He who would become a tragedian, must prepare himself by every extrinsic aid, as well as by solitary study. They who imagine they can succeed by the force of a natural inspiration, are egregious dupes; they can only surprise an audience for a moment by some novelty that will quickly lose its effect. That which approaches near to nature is alone capable of affording reiterated pleasure."

"You must have had moments of intense anxiety when you introduced your innovations into scenic representation; it was a bold effort to run counter to the existing prejudices, and received notions of good taste."

"I do not disguise that I trembled for the result. My friends arranged themselves against my temerity, which they prophesied would be my ruin. I was aware that if I failed I was for ever crushed. On the other side, I felt that a reliance upon the truth of nature, in a scene which convinced the spectators that what I introduced was in the course of an inevitable event, might be safely ventured. I reasoned, that an audience ought not to be displeased with pure simplicity of delineation.*

He referred here to his bold innovation in the play of "Othello," where he put Desdemona to death, as on the English stage, in sight of the audience. Ducis, who had translated and adapted "Othello" from Shakspeare, feared to shock the audience by following the great dramatist. Desdemona was put to death behind the scenes, until Talma made the daring innovation on French notions of stage propriety.

I dared, and succeeded. The judgment of an enlightened audience prevailed over prejudices sanctioned by long usage.'

"It was a bold achievement-you cribbed away the prejudices too long_nurtured by your countrymen against our great dramatic poet."

"It was only proceeding in the rear of nature-that course is everywhere acceptable. Our versions of Shakspeare have still enough of our disguise upon them-he still outrages our national taste in his native dress. The time will come when he will be extensively comprehended here in his own garb-he is all truth."

"You will have the glory, M. Talma, of introducing this great change. Two nations are under great obligations to you. Shakspeare would not have been acted in France but for your efforts."

"The time must come when truth and nature will prevail everywhere -mankind will not retrograde."

Talma had a voice of great compass, completely under his government. I see his melancholy countenance before me now, responding to a mind naturally serious, and of extreme sensibility-in fact, his bodily organisation partook of the same character. The timidity thus engendered, kept alive by the opinion of others, repressed at first the impulse of his better judgment, and made him delay the changes he afterwards adopted in his acting. Thus kept longer than he otherwise would have been to what was styled par excellence, the "classic" mode of acting, with all its stiffness and compression, his originality, so startling and successful, was prevented from being discovered as early as his inclinations prompted its display. He was too much withheld by his fears of the difficulties thrown in his way by zealous friends and critics long chained to the same oar, who believed there could be no excellence but that which had become a fixed law-laws were never to be modified or changed. They talked of the rules sanctioned by time, and affected horror at the introduction of any alterations in their unchangeable rules. Since the days of Talma, the iconoclasts have made sad havoc with the gods of the past.

We met often at the house of Madame D--. She was an ardent admirer of the great actor. It was said that Louis XVIII. had paid him some compliments, when, after the performance, according to custom, Talma bore the lights in attendance upon the monarch as he left the theatre. I forget the precise words, but I well remember it was at the expense of the famous actor Le Kain, whom Louis le Gros (as some wags styled him to ridicule the appellation of Louis le Desiré, given him by the returned emigrants) told Talma he recollected seeing. Madame D-- had written and circulated privately, a remarkable paper, in which she prophesied thirteen years before the events, of 1830, and the expulsion of the Bourbons under the reign of Charles X., if ever he came to the throne. She compared him to James II., of England, for fanaticism, but admitted that of similiar debaucheries to those of the early life of the Count d'Artois, James stood blameless. Referring to the known intimacy, or rather friendship, between Napoleon and Talma, she said,

"So, M. Talma, you acted before the king last night after you had taken leave of the house."

“No, madam, I only rehearsed preparatory to acting under your new dynasty."

Madame D—— lived to see the fulfilment of her prophecy, which the great actor of France never saw. In speaking on political affairs, he was remarkable for his discretion and liberality of feeling. By turns he had sheltered royalist and republican in his house. He knew how the spirit of party adulterates the sources of feeling; he knew the heart, and felt largely the charity due to human failings.

"You are aware of the value of appearances, M. Talma,” said Madame D one day; we must respect them in all cases."

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"I am aware of the value of words, madam, and that appearances too often should be read hypocrisies-it is better to appear only what we are."

"Then I fear we should not live very happily in society."

"I should not if I were obliged to support myself upon appearances— I should fear a self-betrayal every hour.'

"Pooh, M. Talma, you judge too nearly; we must sacrifice something to live agreeably with those around us."

"Money, time, good offices, if you please, but not sincerity, Madame D."

"Ladies do not contract the meanings of their words as you dowhat I intended by appearances, is well understood by every body."

"If the word conceal nothing, would it not be better to abandon its use, and rely upon what we are? ambiguity is mischievous."

66 If you were making love on the stage, you would adopt a phraseology very different from that you now advocate."

"My professional phraseology is not my own, Madame D. In making love for myself, I imagine I should succeed best in proportion as the object of my love credited my sincerity, rather than the appearance of it."

He had a great horror of duplicity and inconsistency of character. He could not bear to see a priest outrage religion, although the animosity of the church towards his profession, filled him with something like distaste to most who belonged to the cloth; a feeling not unnatural, when excommunication was promulgated by the ecclesiastics of France upon all actors. He would not accept the offices of the church in his dying hour, nor suffer the Archbishop of Paris to come into his presence on that occasion.

I found Talma was too susceptible of the attacks of petty journalists upon his performances-much more so than might have been supposed from his daring innovations upon matters relating to his art. They were often the offspring of mere malignity, and so unjust, that they could not have misled the public judgment. It is true, that twenty years ago, the opinions of the newspapers upon art or literary works were of much more consequence than in the present day. Whether the criticisms then were the result of a higher order of talent, as I am inclined to think they were, or that the merely commercial object of gain actuates them more energetically now in their praise or dispraise, certain it is, that the public will neither reject a good work nor accept a bad one, upon the credit of present journalism. Unconvinced that censure not well founded must defeat its own malice, Talma endeavoured to conciliate the petty critics, a task about as hopeless as the traveller's who, being annoyed by grasshoppers, got off his horse to kill them all. He was accused too of falling

into the habit, from the same cause, of listening with too much complacency to those writers who flattered him, and thereby secured over him a stronger influence than was possessed by many of his friends.

Of these things I do not pretend to form a competent judgment either as to the truth or falsehood; but, as an actor, I confess the effect he produced on my feelings in "Othello" and "Macbeth," tragedies in which I was a more competent judge than in dramatic pieces purely French, was such as I never before experienced, except on seeing Mrs. Siddons in some of her best characters. He had abandoned French declamation, and substituted the simple and natural tone attaching to the part. Of intonation and expression in all their phases he was a perfect master. The terrible in his representations was more fixed in the heart of the spectator-the spectator himself became more a part of the scene going forward on the boards than I ever found the case with any other performer. In some passages where the gloomy and profound, the energetic and terrible, or where vengeance, fury, despair, by turns moved in the action, he made the frame thrill with painful emotion, and not unfrequently a species of fear. This was more particularly visible in his delineation of Othello. His fury was terrific, electrical, the real being, not the ideal image of the passion, he depicted. The difference of years in his characters was portrayed too with surprising verisimilitude. The decrepitude of age, and the vivacity of youth were, in him, equally pictures of unexceptionable excellence.

We were dining together one day with several friends, when Talma recited in English some passages from "Richard III." His terrible sardonic laugh in this character has been frequently commented upon. He accented differently from our tragedians the passage, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse," which, on the English stage, was generally given with great emphasis on the first syllable of "kingdom." Talma spoke it more in accordance with nature, the emphasis being laid by him strongly upon the word "horse," the object desired in his extremity by the tyrant, more than upon the reward, although some might argue that the incitement to obtain the object desired, as applied to others, should be most audible. The natural course was that adopted by Talma -the principal means desired being expressed before the accessory ones.

On entering the salon of Madame D-- with him one day, a very pretty girl from the provinces, whose ears his fame had reached, but who had never seen Talma, was eager to observe him. Although he entered the room in good spirits the young lady turned to a companion and said,

"So that is M. Talma! How sad he looks. I suppose his representing tragedy so frequently makes him melancholy out of the theatre." Her companion, to set her right, told her it was the natural character of his physiognomy.

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Oh, then his melancholy made him play tragedy-instead of tragedy having made him look melancholy-I see it now."

Talma was much diverted by the inference of the young provinciale.

"I should be sorry to advise any one to make the stage a profession," he said to me one day; "I discourage all who come to me, full of enthusiasm, and self-convinced of success, if they can but make their débût. I

tell them they are upon the edge of a precipice blindfolded, while they fancy they are strutting with royal robes in the palace-gardens."

"Would you choose the profession of an actor, if you were to go through life again?"

"I would," he replied; "looking at myself-I have succeeded. I would not when I recollect the effects of the members who have failedthe chances of success are infinitely small."

"Was Napoleon a good judge of acting?"

"He leaned rather to the sentiment than to the representation-his judgment was sound-sometimes tinctured with a bias to favourite notions. His successes strengthened my regard for simplicity in all things connected with my profession-his habits, expressions, directions, actions, were governed by perfect simplicity. The military say the same of all his field operations-nothing is great but it is simple."

"Of your own dramatic authors, among the more celebrated, which do you prefer?"

"Corneille."

"You want in French the power of our blank verse, to render more complete the illusion of the stage."

"In England it would be missed, and the loss could not be compensated; but the genius of our language is more cramped-less capable of free expression than yours; we are hampered by rules which must be obeyed; our audiences, too, are accustomed to the recurrence of rhyme in tragedy, without which the French would hardly be poetical prose in the sight of a foreigner or a native."

This

The peculiar manner of this great actor, many of his delicate touches in his histrionic painting, those excellences which stamped him the founder of a school of actors peculiarly his own, and in which he yet stands alone in his glory, I can remember well. Long years have elapsed since we first met and parted, and many have passed away since his death. No successor has appeared to follow his footsteps, even at a lagging distance. Talma has departed with the generation that conferred upon him his renown. No evidence of his talents can be submitted to present judgment, his name alone being emergent in the waste of time. is the lot of all his profession. From the existing state of the dramatic art, both in England and France, it becomes a question whether it will be revived in some future time-whether again future Talmas and Kembles shall appear to delight and instruct the nations. Under the present aspect of things, we must live upon the recollection of what we have seen, and repeat the tale to the generation whose birth was almost consentaneous with the disappearance of this greatest of modern tragedians.

N.