and them, and yet no applause, no success, turned her from concentration on the purpose and issue of her art.
"While standing up before my glass," she tells us, "and taking off my mantle, a diverting circumstance occurred to chase away the feelings of the anxious night, for, while I was repeating, and endeavouring to call to mind the appropriate tone and action to the following words, 'Here's the smell of blood still,' my dresser innocently exclaimed, 'Dear me, Ma'am, how very hysterical you are to-night! I protest and vow, Ma'am, it was not blood, but rose-pink and water; for I saw the property-man mix it up with my own eyes.'"
These were, indeed, the palmy days of the English stage. With a self-collected, courageous energy, artists then saw and recognised the greatest, and strained every nerve to attain it. Scenic effect was of minor importance; the development of mental action, the portrayal of passion, were the end and aim of the actor's art, to which everything else was subsidiary. They spent years upon the evolving of one heroic conception, not with regard to its details of upholstery and scene-painting, but with regard to the presentment of the poet's imagination which they undertook to represent.
