r equalled by any effect produced by the most successful
efforts of the English stage. At our own theatres, we have been often
more deeply affected during the performance of the play,--we have often
admired, much more, the grace, or feeling, or grandeur of the acting we
witnessed, and been more highly delighted with the _species_ of talent
which was displayed; but yet, we must acknowledge, that the impression
that all this _left upon the mind_, was not such as has been produced by
the powers of Talma in the French tragedies. We had many occasions,
however, to see that this effect was to be attributed chiefly to the
genius of this great actor, and that it was only when entrusted to him,
that the influence of these plays was so deeply felt.

The great difference, then, between the acting of Talma, and of the
other actors on the French stage, is his constant attention to the means
by which the impression, which the general tendency of the play will
produce, may be increased. Whatever may be the character which the
nature of the tragedy seems to require, his whole powers are employed to
pursue that character inviolably during the progress of the play, and to
add to the effect it is fitted to produce: The character of profound
grief, for instance, is so completely sustained, that the very act of
speaking seems an exertion too great for a mind which suffering has
nearly exhausted, and where, in consequence, the pomp and energy of
declamation, and many of the most natural aids by which passion is wont
to express itself, are all disregarded in the intensity of mental agony.
It is not uncommon, accordingly, to see Talma perform parts of a tragedy
in a manner which might seem tame and unmeaning to one who had not been
present at the preceding parts, but which is most interesting to those
who have seen the character which he adopts from the first, and feel the
propriety and effect of the manner in which that character is sustained.
Some of the most striking effects we have ever seen produced in any
acting, are in those scenes, in many plays in which he performs, in
which, from his powerful and affecting personation of character, his
exhausted mind seems unable to enter into any events which are not
either to relieve his sufferings, or terminate an existence which
appears beset with such hopeless misery. Other actors may have succeeded
in expressing as strongly the influence of present suffering, or the
despair of intense grief. It