of their lives and deeds. That record, from the days of
Gerard Langbaine to the days of Thomas Campbell, Leigh
Hunt, William Hazlitt, and Charles Lamb, has instructed and
charmed a vast multitude of readers. No story, in truth,
can be more impressive or more affecting. Genius, beauty,
renown, the pageantry of public careers, the wild tumult of
popular applause, lives of stainless integrity and heroic self-
sacrifice, and lives of glittering infamy, lawless revel, and
lamentable anguish, — such are the elements of a narrative
that no sympathetic mind can contemplate without emotion
or without improvement. To add one brief page to that
story — a leaf from the present time — is the purpose of this
sketch. Its group of actresses must, necessarily, be a small
one, since its scope is restricted within narrow limits. The
artists herein described, however, are typical of different
nationalities and different orders of talent. As such — and
not in negligence of the signal ability and reputation of many
of their contemporaries — they have been selected for present
description.
I.
ADELAIDE RISTORI.
To all votaries of the stage, Adelaide Bistori is a familiar and an honored name. On the 20th of September, 1866, the great Italian actress made her first professional appearance in America. Since then she has acted in nearly all the im- portant cities in the United States. The way had been smoothed for her coming. Long before she came, portions of her story had been widely circulated in the Press, and her name had become known in almost every household. The record of her life illustrates the development of an original nature and the progress of singular genius. It commencefl
