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¬tones so subdued, so transient, and so delicately expressive, that to extend the voice in them would annihilate the scene, and the very con- sciousness that its extension is necessary, dis- turbs and baulks the actor in the noblest exer- tions, and by sympathy, even in the most re- fined conceptions of his art. If this great er- ror shall remain uncorrected, acting will not only be retrograde, but a taste so vicious will be created by it, that if in another age our Gar- rick, and Siddons, and Kemble, were to re-ap- pear amongst us, their talents might be eclipsed by the mere speaking trumpets of the stage. ¬Another cause has long perhaps obstructed a more continued succession of superior actors, but, which, from the improved manners and genius of many of them, both dead and living, has been for some time insensibly wearing away — I mean the estimation in which the stage has been regarded. To secure for it a perpetual and still increasing lustre, the road should be open, as in other professions, to the most liberal consi- deration, ¬
