creation as her Meg
Merrilies. Her genius could embody the sublime, the beautiful, the
terrible, and with all this the humorous; and it was saturated with
goodness. If the love of beauty was intensified by the influence of her
art, virtue was also strengthened by the force of her example and the
inherent dignity of her nature.

XIV.

ON THE DEATH OF LAWRENCE BARRETT.

[Obiit March 20, 1891.]

The death of Lawrence Barrett was the disappearance of one of the
noblest figures of the modern stage. During the whole of his career, in
a public life of thirty-five years, he was steadily and continuously
impelled by a pure and fine ambition and the objects that he sought to
accomplish were always the worthiest and the best. His devotion to the
dramatic art was a passionate devotion, and in an equal degree he was
devoted to a high ideal of personal conduct. Doctrines of expediency
never influenced him and indeed were never considered by him. He had
early fixed his eyes on the dramatic sceptre. He knew that it never
could be gained except by the greatest and brightest of artistic
achievements, and to them accordingly he consecrated his life. Whenever
and wherever he appeared the community was impressed with a sense of
intellectual character, moral worth, and individual dignity. Many other
dramatic efforts might be trivial. Those of Lawrence Barrett were always
felt to be important. Most of the plays with which his name is
identified are among the greatest plays in our language, and the spirit
in which he treated them was that of exalted scholarship, austere
reverence, and perfect refinement. He was profoundly true to all that is
noble and beautiful, and because he was true the world of art everywhere
recognised him as the image of fidelity and gave to him the high tribute
of its unwavering homage. His coming was always a signal to arouse the
mind. His mental vitality, which was very great, impressed even
unsympathetic beholders with a sense of fiery thought struggling in its
fetters of mortality and almost shattering and consuming the frail
temple of its human life. His stately head, silvered with graying hair,
his dark eyes deeply sunken and glowing with intense light, his thin
visage pallid with study and pain, his form of grace and his voice of
sonorous eloquence and solemn music (in compass, variety, and sweetness
one of the few great voices of the current dramatic generation), his
tremendous earnestness, his supe