mple and austere, above the mixed elements around
her. On the dark side, she is very great in hatred and revenge. I
admired her more in Phedre than in any other part in which I saw her.
The guilty love inspired by the hatred of a goddess was expressed in
all its symptoms with a force and terrible naturalness that almost
suffocated the beholder. After she had taken the poison, the
exhaustion and paralysis of the system, the sad, cold, calm submission
to Fate, were still more grand.

I had heard so much about the power of her eye in one fixed look, and
the expression she could concentrate in a single word, that the utmost
results could only satisfy my expectations. It is, indeed, something
magnificent to see the dark cloud give out such sparks, each one fit
to deal a separate death; but it was not that I admired most in her:
it was the grandeur, truth, and depth of her conception of each part,
and the sustained purity with which she represented it.

For the rest, I shall write somewhere a detailed _critique_ upon the
parts in which I saw her. It is she who has made me acquainted with
the true way of viewing French tragedy. I had no idea of its powers
and symmetry till now, and have received from the revelation high
pleasure and a crowd of thoughts.

The French language from her lips is a divine dialect; it is stripped
of its national and personal peculiarities, and becomes what any
language must, moulded by such a genius, the pure music of the heart
and soul. I never could remember her tone in speaking any word; it
was too perfect; you had received the thought quite direct. Yet, had
I never heard her speak a word, my mind would, be filled by her
attitudes. Nothing more graceful can be conceived, nor could the
genius of sculpture surpass her management of the antique drapery.

She has no beauty except in the intellectual severity of her outline,
and bears marks of age which will grow stronger every year, and make
her ugly before long. Still it will be a _grandiose_, gypsy, or rather
Sibylline ugliness, well adapted to the expression of some tragic
parts. Only it seems as if she could not live long; she expends force
enough upon a part to furnish out a dozen common lives.

Though the French tragedy is well acted throughout, yet unhappily
there is no male actor now with a spark of fire, and these men seem
the meanest pigmies by the side of Rachel;--so on the scene, beside
the tragedy intended by the author, you see also