er; while Galatea found in her certainly
the most poetic and beautiful representation of that fanciful character,
ever seen on any stage. This was the verdict of the public who thronged
the Lyceum to its utmost capacity, during the months of the past winter.
This was the verdict, too, of the largest provincial towns of the kingdom.
The critics, some of them, were willing to concede to Mary Anderson the
possession of every grace which can adorn a woman, and of every
qualification which can make an artist attractive, with a solitary but
fatal reservation--_she was devoid of genius_. But what, indeed, is genius
after all? It is the magic power to touch unerringly a sympathetic chord
in the human breast. The novelist, whose characters seem to be living; the
painter, the figures on whose canvas appear to breathe; the actor who,
while he treads the stage, is forgotten in the character he assumes; all
these possess it. This was the verdict of the public upon Mary Anderson,
and we are fain to believe that--_pace_ the critics--it was the true one.
Her Clarice was perhaps the least successful of her impersonations; and
given as an afterpiece, it taxed unfairly the endurance of an actress, who
had already been some hours upon the stage. But as a striking illustration
of the reality of her performance, we may mention, that, in the scene
where she is supposed by her guests to be acting, her fellow actors, who
should have applauded the tragic outburst which the public divine to be
real, were so disconcerted by the vehemence and seeming reality of her
grief and despair, that on the first representation of "Comedy and
Tragedy" they actually forgot their parts, and had to be called to task by
the author for failing properly to support the star. "No man," it is said,
"is a hero to his _valet de chambre_," and few indeed are the artists who
can make their fellow artists on the stage forget that the mimic passion
which convulses them is but consummate art after all.

Mary Anderson's present Lyceum season will exhibit her in characters which
will give opportunity for displaying powers of a widely different order to
those called forth in the last. A new Juliet and a new Lady Macbeth will
show the capacity she possesses for the true exhibition of the tenderest
as well as the stormiest passions which can agitate the human breast; and
she may perhaps appear in Cushman's famous _role_ of Meg Merrilies. In all
these she invites comparison with grea