storm that shook her frame with convulsive sobs, and deluged her
cheeks with tears. Despite her desperate efforts to maintain her
self-control, the sight of her husband's magnetic handsome face,
after thirteen weary years of waiting, unnerved, overwhelmed her.
There in the temple of Art, where critical eyes were bent searchingly
upon her, Nature triumphantly asserted itself, and she who wept
passionately from the bitter realisation of her own accumulated
wrongs, was wildly applauded as the queen of actresses, who so
successfully simulated imaginary woes.

By what infallible criterion shall criticdom decide the boundaries of
the Actual and the Ideal? Who shall compute the expenditure of
literal heartache that builds up the popularly successful Desdemonas,
Camilles, and Marie Stuarts; the scalding tears that gradually
crystallize into the classic repose essential to the severe
simplicity of the old Greek tragedies?

The curtain fell upon a bowed and sobbing woman, and the tempest of
applause that shook the building was prolonged until after a time Amy
Robsart, with tears still glistening on her cheeks, came forward to
acknowledge the tribute, and her silken garments were pelted with
bouquets. Among the number that embroidered the stage lay a pyramid
of violets edged with rose geranium leaves, and raising it she bent
her lovely head to the audience and kissed the violets, in memory (?)
of her far-off child--whose withered floral tribute was more precious
to the woman's heart than all the laudatry chaplets of the great
city, which did homage to her genuine tears.

Some time elapsed while the play shifted to the court, recounting the
feuds of Leicester and Sussex, and when Amy Robsart appeared again it
was in the stormy interview where Varney endeavours to enforce the
earl's command that she shall journey to Kenilworth as Varney's wife.
The trembling submissiveness of earlier scenes was thrown away for
ever, and, as if metamorphosed into a Fury, she rose, towered above
him, every feature quivering with hatred, scorn, and defiance.

"Look at him, Janet! that I should go with him to Kenilworth, and
before the Queen and nobles, and in presence of my own wedded lord,
that I should acknowledge him,--him there, that very cloak-brushing,
shoe-cleaning fellow,--him there, my lord's lackey, for my liege
lord and husband! I would I were a man but for five minutes!--but go!
begone!"

She paused panting, then threw back her haug