tes. At length the
clouds that had darkened the career of Louis Herrera were entirely
dissipated, and the long perspective of happiness before him appeared
the brighter, when contrasted with the misfortunes and sufferings that
had embittered the early manhood of the Student of Salamanca.

SHAKSPEARE AND THE DRAMA.

A LETTER TO T. SMITH, ESQ., SCENE-PAINTER AND TRAGEDIAN AT THE
AMPHITHEATRE.

MY DEAR SIR--or let me at once break through the formalities of a first
acquaintance, and say, dear Smith;--Dear Smith, I am delighted to have
been at last introduced to a real member of the theatrical profession--a
_bona fide_ flesh and blood, silk-stocking'd and tinsel-rapier'd "pride
of Astley's stage." If you unite in your own person the artist and the
player; if you occasionally handle the painter's brush as well as the
field-marshal's truncheon--for have I not seen you lead the British
troops with heroic valour through the awful passes of Cabul, which I had
seen you creating with lamp-black and grey chalks in the morning?--it
will only prove that your genius is universal, or, at least, not limited
to one mode of development; but that, as D'Israeli is an orator and a
statesman, you are a scene-painter and performer. But your qualities are
not of so confined a nature even as this. For have I not seen you, in
the intervals of your possessing the stage, employ your great strength
in pushing forward the ponderous woods of Bondy you have painted? Have I
not seen you dash off dungeon in the Castle of Udolpho with all the
vigour of Rembrandt, roll it forward on the stage with the strength of
Hercules, and then murder the turnkey in it with the power and elegance
of Thurtell? But it is not the multifariousness of your merits that
makes me proud of calling you my friend: no, it is the modesty with
which you bear your honours thick upon you--the ignorance, as it were,
of your own position, as compared with that of others infinitely your
inferiors--that shows you at once the man of genius and the gentleman.
Macready, you acknowledge, is perhaps your superior in such parts as
Lear and Hamlet; but did he ever paint a single side-scene in his life?
Beverley, they say, is equal to Stanfield in the poetry of his
landscapes; and you confess that in his airs and distances he surpasses
your noblest efforts. Ask yourself, my dear friend, if he ever fought a
terrific combat with a sword in each hand, with such courage as I have
seen you