acting,
progress in that direction has gone far enough. The supreme beauty of
the production was the poetic atmosphere of it--the irradiation of that
strange sensation of being haunted which sometimes will come upon you,
even at noon-day, in lonely places, on vacant hillside, beneath the dark
boughs of great trees, in the presence of the grim and silent rocks, and
by the solitary margin of the sea. The feeling was that of Goethe's own
weird and suggestive scene of the Open Field, the black horses, and the
raven-stone; or that of the shuddering lines of Coleridge:--

"As one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on
And turns no more his head,
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread."

III.

ADELAIDE NEILSON AS IMOGEN AND JULIET.

Shakespeare's drama of _Cymbeline_ seems not at any time in the history
of the stage to have been a favourite with theatrical audiences. In New
York it has had but five revivals in more than a hundred years, and
those occurred at long intervals and were of brief continuance. The
names of Thomas Barry, Mrs. Shaw-Hamblin (Eliza Marian Trewar), and
Julia Bennett Barrow are best remembered in association with it on the
American stage. It had slept for more than a generation when, in the
autumn of 1876, Adelaide Neilson revived it at Philadelphia; but since
then it has been reproduced by several of her imitators. She first
offered it on the New York stage in May 1877, and it was then seen that
her impersonation of Imogen was one of the best of her works. If it be
the justification of the stage as an institution of public benefit and
social advancement, that it elevates humanity by presenting noble
ideals of human nature and making them exemplars and guides, that
justification was practically accomplished by that beautiful
performance.

The poetry of _Cymbeline_ is eloquent and lovely. The imagination of its
appreciative reader, gliding lightly over its more sinister incidents,
finds its story romantic, its accessories--both of the court and the
wilderness--picturesque, its historic atmosphere novel and exciting, and
the spirit of it tender and noble. Such a reader, likewise, fashions its
characters into an ideal form which cannot be despoiled by comparison
with a visible standard of reality. It is not, however, an entirely
pleasant play to witness. The acting version, indeed, is co