"I should possess a graphic pen, indeed, were I able to communicate to

you, by the faint coloring of words, anything like an adequate idea of

the lofty grandeur of the scene which was spread out beneath me as I

paused on the summit of the mountain to cast back one more lingering

look on France. The sun was just setting, and the slant rays lighted

with dazzling lustre the snowy peaks around me, and bathed in a flood

of light like molten gold the crags and flinty projections of the

lightning-scathed and time-defying rocks. A dark cloud, like a funeral

pall, overhung the valley; the mountain-torrent hoarsely brawled

along its devious channel half choked with thick-ribbed ice; and a

thousand features of rude magnificence filled me with admiration of the

sublimity which marks this home of the tempest and avalanche. At the

hotel where I supped, a number of the peasantry were making the most

of the Carnival-time with music, masking, and dancing,--_and all this

above the clouds_!

"Day was just breaking when we entered Turin. The hum and stir of busy

life were just beginning, and the laborer, called from his pallet to

resume his toil, jostled in the street the sons of revelry, returning

jaded and worn out from the scenes of merriment. The traveller who

would view the Carnival in its most attractive guise should not break

in upon it with the pale light of morning, as what I saw on entering

Turin fully satisfied me. The lamps were still burning in the streets,

and the maskers wearily returning to their several homes. Poor

Harlequin, with sprained ankle, limped tediously away. Columbine hung

listlessly upon the arm of Pantaloon, whose chalky visage was without

a smile, and whose thoughts, if he thought at all, were probably

running much upon the same theme as honest Sancho's when he pronounced

a blessing on the man who first invented sleep. These exhausted

revellers, a weary sentinel here and there half dozing on his post, and

a houseless beggar wandering on his unappointed course, were the sights

that first drew my attention on entering the gates of Turin.

"The streets of Turin are spacious and clean, and cross each other

at right angles. Their regularity and airiness were quite refreshing

after being so long confined to the dungeon-like dimensions and gloom

of the byways of a French town. But these spacious streets, like those

of all other Italian cities, are overrun with mendicants, and I have

already had occasion to observe that where palaces most abound so also

do beggars. The foundations of the lordly structures of aristocracy

everywhere alike are laid on the rights of man, and the cement which

holds them together is mixed with the tears of human misery.

"Going to the church of St. Philip this morning, I encountered an old

man sitting on the pavement, supplicating for alms in heart-rending

tones. He could not have been less than eighty years of age, and his

long locks, of silvery whiteness, strayed thinly over his shrivelled

neck. His eyes were out,--those pure messengers of thought no longer

twinkled in their spheres,--but he still turned the orbless sockets to

each passer, imploring charity in the name of Him whose crucified image

he grasped in his attenuated fingers. I was touched by the spectacle,

and as I approached to drop my dole into his hand, I noticed a brass

plate hanging on his threadbare garment, the inscription on which

denoted that this mendicant had been regularly examined by the police,

and had taken out his license to beg! What a source this from which to

derive public revenue! What a commentary on the nature of government

in this oppressed country! What a contrast it suggested, in turning

my thoughts to my own land, where government is the people's choice,

the rulers their servants, and laws nothing more than recorded public

opinion!

"On entering the church of St. Philip, I found before an altar blazing

with lights and enveloped in clouds of incense a priest performing

the impressive service of the Catholic Church. But the thing that

struck me was the democratic spirit which seemed to govern the

congregation in their public worship. I saw kneeling and mingling in

prayer the sumptuously clad and the ragged, the clean and the unclean,

the prince and the beggar. On the pavement at a little distance

from me lay extended a strapping mendicant, reduced in point of

clothing almost to the condition of Lear's 'unaccommodated man,' and

groaning out his prayers in tones that sounded more like curses than

supplications, while at his side, with graceful mien and placid brow,

knelt a Sardinian sylph, looking more like an angel interceding for

the prostrate wretch than a being of kindred nature asking mercy for

herself.

"The museum of Turin is of great extent, and contains vast apartments

devoted to natural history, mineralogy, and other sciences. There

are here, besides, some rare specimens of antique Greek and Egyptian

sculpture. The finest collection of paintings is in the palace of the

duchess, among them pictures by Vandyke, Rubens, Teniers, Murillo, and

other 'approved good masters.' I was much struck with a full equestrian

portrait of his present majesty Charles Albert, by Horace Vernet.

Vernet is one of the very few whose horses _live_ on the canvas.

The one to which I now allude is not only exhibited in all his fair

proportions, with muscles, thews, and sinews that seem swelling with

life, but actual, not counterfeit, spirit shines in the sparkle of his

eye and is seen in the breath of his distended nostrils.

"The Grand Opera House of Turin is very spacious, containing six rows

of boxes, dimly lighted by a single small chandelier suspended over the

centre of the pit. The rest of the lights are reserved for the stage,

by which the scenic effects are greatly heightened; but I doubt if

what is gained in that respect would reconcile an American audience to

sit in a sort of twilight so dim as scarcely to allow one to know the

complexion of the person sitting at his side. The performances were

very ordinary, and presented nothing worth mentioning or remembering."

He rode into beautiful Genoa over that magnificent Corniche road whose

left side is diversified with stretching fields and olive-orchards

and soaring cliffs, whose right side the blue ocean fringes. The city

has a charm to the imagination of an American from its connection

with Columbus, and a charm to the eye from that lovely semicircle of

mountains embracing it, and which so slope to the waves of the sea

in front and blend with the clouds of the sky in the rear that it is

often impossible for the gazer to tell where earth ends and heaven

begins. It was Sunday when Forrest entered Genoa. Looking out into the

glorious bay, he saw an American ship of war riding proudly at anchor,

the beautiful banner of stars and stripes hanging at her peak, every

mast and spar and rope mirrored in the glassy flood below. His breast

thrilled at the sight. He hired a boatman to row him out. Clambering

up the side, he asked permission of the commander to come on deck and

to stand underneath the flag. It was granted, and, looking up at the

silken folds floating between him and heaven, he breathed deeply in

pride and joy. "The ship," he said, "was a fragment of my country

floated away here, and in touching it I felt reunited to the whole

again."

He made a long tarry in Florence, studying the treasures of art for

which that city is so renowned. He became intimate with Horatio

Greenough, for whose genius--hardly yet appreciated as it deserves--he

felt the warmest admiration. "He favored me," writes Forrest, "with

a sight of his yet unfinished model for the statue of Washington,

which was ordered by our government. He has represented the Father of

his Country in a sitting posture, his left hand grasping the sword

intrusted to him by the people for the achievement of their liberties,

and his right pointing upward, as if to express reliance on the God of

battles and the justice of his cause. With what different emotions did

I regard this statue from those created by the marble honors paid to

the Cæsars of the olden time! How my heart warmed with patriotic ardor

and my eyes moistened as I looked on the reverend image of the great

sage and hero! As an American I felt allied to him,--as an American I

felt, too, with a consciousness that diffused a warm and grateful flush

upon my cheek, that I was an heir to that sacred legacy of freedom

which he and his compatriots bequeathed to their country."

After visiting Rome, Naples, Venice, Verona, and other places of the

greatest interest in Italy, Forrest proceeded to Spain, where he spent

several delightful weeks. He made Seville his chief headquarters,

remembering the old Spanish proverb he had often heard, "Who sees not

Seville misses a marvel." One day, while riding on horseback in the

suburbs,--it being in the harvest-season,--he passed a vineyard in

which the peasants were at work. He saw one man standing with upturned

breast and outstretched arms to receive a bunch of grapes which another

man was cutting from a vine loaded with clusters so enormous that a

single one must have weighed forty or fifty pounds. At this sight he

reined in his horse, and his head sank on his bosom. The years rolled

back, and he was a boy again. Once more it was a Sunday afternoon in

summer, and through the open window of a house in Philadelphia the

sunshine was streaming across the floor where a young lad, with a

Bible in his hands, was laughing at the picture of two men carrying a

bunch of the grapes of Eshcol slung on a pole between them. Again the

hand of the mother was on the shoulder of the boy, and her dark eyes

fixed on his, and in his soul he heard, as distinctly as though spoken

audibly to his outward ear, the words, "Edwin, never laugh at the

fancied ignorance and absurdity of another, when perhaps the ignorance

and absurdity are all your own." The tears ran down his cheeks as,

starting up his horse, he said to himself, "Ah, mother, mother! dear

good soul, how wise and kind you were! What a fool I was!"

From Spain Forrest returned for a flying visit to Paris, where he wrote

the following letter to his mother, which may be taken as a specimen of

the large number he sent to her during his absence:

"PARIS, July 3d, 1835.

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--Your letter of the 27th of May has this moment

reached me. How happy has the perusal of it made me! You write that

you have been sick, but that now you are well. How glad I am to hear

that you are restored! It is the dearest wish of my heart that health

and happiness may always be preserved to you,--to you and to my dear

sisters. Your welfare makes existence doubly sweet to me. I bear a

'charmed life' so long as you live and smile. All that I am I owe to

you. Your necessities prompted my ambition; your affection led me on

to triumph,--the harvest is your own, and my choicest wish is that you

may long live to enjoy it. I was in Naples the 9th of March last, the

anniversary of my birthday, and you were not forgotten. I drank a cup

of wine to you, and my heart grew proud while it acknowledged you the

source of its creation.

"It gives me great pleasure to hear that James Sheridan Knowles called

to see you, and I regret that your indisposition prevented you from

seeing him. I am told he is a sincere and warm-hearted man; and when

such estimable qualities are joined to the rare talents which he

possesses, the individual who combines them is as 'one man picked out

of ten thousand.'

"Mr. Wemyss, in sending to you the season-tickets (though you may

never use them), has acted like himself, and I most gratefully

acknowledge his politeness and courtesy. You say you are anxiously

counting the months and days until my return. In two months more we

shall have been parted for a year,--a whole year. That is a long time

in the calendar when hearts that love become the reckoners of the

hours. But the day draws on when we are to meet again; and after the

first moments of our happy greetings, when your blessing has confirmed

my return, and the emotions of the first hours shall be subdued into

the serene content that must surely follow, then will we regard our

present separation as a short dream of the past, and wonder that we

thought we were divided so long.

"I will forward to you by the ship which will carry this letter a

small box containing the following articles, viz., a necklace made

from the lava of Vesuvius, beautifully carved and set in gold,

together with a pair of ear-rings, for sister Henrietta; a cameo of

the three Graces and a pair of lava ear-rings for Eleanora; a cameo of

the Apollo Belvedere and a pair of lava ear-rings for Caroline. The

two cameos Caroline and Eleanora will have set in gold, to wear as

breast-pins, and charge the expense thereof to my account.

"Give my best respects to Goodman, and say how much I thank him for

his friendly attentions. I suppose Col. Wetherill is grubbing away at

his farm: or has he got tired of green fields and running brooks? If

you see him, say he is most gratefully remembered by me. I am glad

John Wall occasionally calls upon you. I like him much. And now, to

conclude, allow me to say to you, my dear mother, to be of good cheer,

for my wanderings will soon be over, and I shall again be restored to

you in unabated health and strength. And meanwhile, be assured that

your son,

'Where'er he roams, whatever clime to see,

His _heart_ untravelled fondly turns to thee.'

EDWIN FORREST."

His short stay in the principal cities of the German

Confederation,--now so wondrously consolidated and transformed into the

German Empire,--though highly edifying and satisfactory to him at the

time, yields nothing which calls for present record, unless, perhaps,

a passing entry in his diary at Dresden be worthy of citation. "Rose

from a refreshing siesta and walked upon the fashionable Terrace.

The evening was calm and beautiful. The flowers and shrubs profusely

growing, the music of a fine band, the rush and patter of children's

feet, with the rapture of their voices in joyous sport, the eyes

of their parents beaming on them with tranquillity and hope, made

all around appear a paradise. My brow alone seemed clouded; it was,

however, but for an instant, as a quick thought of home sprang through

my brain, and busy memories of _her_ who had once watched my infant

steps stirred about my heart. Would that, unimpeded by space, I could

waft all my fond wishes to her at this moment!"

An excursion in Switzerland yielded him intense enjoyment. His studies

for the rôle of William Tell had made him familiar with this country,

and he longed to verify and complete his mental impressions by the more

concrete perceptions obtainable through the direct senses. To stand

in the village of Altorf and on the field of Grütli, to row a boat on

Lucerne and Unterwald, to scale the mountains and see the lammergeyer

swoop and hear the avalanche fall, to pause among the torrents and

precipices and cry aloud,

"Ye crags and peaks. I'm with you once again;

I call to you with all my voice; I hold

To you the hands you first beheld, to show

They still are free!"

must have given him no ordinary pleasure. At Chamouni he bought a copy

of that magnificent hymn of nature composed in this valley by Coleridge

during his visit here. Printed on a rough sheet, it was for sale at the

inn. Forrest had never seen it before. He climbed some distance up the

side of the great mountain. Reaching a grassy spot in full view of the

principal features of the landscape, he thrust his alpenstock in the

earth, hung his hat upon it, and, seating himself beside a beautiful

cascade whose steady roar mingled with his voice, he read aloud that

sublime poem whose solemn thoughts and gorgeous diction so well befit

the theme they treat.

"Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star

In his steep course? So long he seems to pause

On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc!

The Arve and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form,

Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines

How silently!"

Speaking of the incident long years afterward, he said he did not

think of it at the time as any sort of religious service, but that his

emotions really made it as genuine a one as the recital of a liturgy in

any pettier and less divine cathedral.

From Germany he took ship to England. The following extract from a

letter home will give a glimpse of his experience in London, where it

was written:

"I have been here about three weeks, and it gives me great pleasure to

say that, from the abundant proofs I have had of _English hospitality_,

it amply deserves that world-wide reputation which has rendered the

phrase proverbial. Among men of letters, among the intelligent and

worthy of the middling class of society, and among those of my own

profession, I have found nothing but the warmest cordiality and

kindness. So grateful, indeed, has been the welcome I have received,

and so agreeably has my time passed, that it is with exceeding regret I

am about to tear myself away. But, being desirous of seeing the north

of Europe before I return to my native land, I must take advantage of

the present season to travel into Russia, as I fear that the 'eager and

nipping air' of the north at a later period would bite too shrewdly for

me. To-night I set out with my friend Wikoff for Hamburg, and thence to

St. Petersburg and Moscow.

"The present not being the season for theatricals in London, I have had

but scanty opportunities of judging of the merits of the performers.

I have seen Liston and Farren, however, both distinguished for their

talents, and both deservedly admired. Yet I have seen nothing to

alter the opinion which you know I have long entertained, that _Henry

Placide_ is the best actor on the stage in his own diversified range.

"I am very often solicited to perform during my sojourn abroad, but to

all such requests my answer is invariably in the negative. I tell my

friends here, as I told those at home before leaving, that my object

in visiting Europe was not professional. Thanks to my countrymen! they

have obviated the necessity of my going on such a tour.

"James Sheridan Knowles has come back, and I was at 'Old Drury' when

he reappeared. His reception was very warm and hearty, and after the

play (The Wife) he was called out, when he addressed the audience in

a few words expressive of his thanks for their cordial greeting, and

took occasion to advert, in very glowing terms, evidently prompted

by sincere feeling, to the kindness he had experienced in America.

He termed our country 'the bright land beyond the seas,' and our

country-people 'his brothers and sisters.' His acknowledgments of

gratitude were received by a full house with acclamations."

During the passage of the steamer William Jolliffe from London to

Hamburg, Forrest evidently found no little amusement in studying the

peculiarities of his fellow-passengers. He writes thus, for example:

"Almost always when travelling in a public conveyance, if you notice,

you will observe some one who tries to attract attention by standing

out _in relievo_ from the rest. Actuated by such a low ambition was

an overgrown, unwieldy, almost spherical lady, dubbed on the way-bill

honorable, and said to be the wife of a member of Parliament. This

_dame passée_ strove to ape the manners of a girl of sixteen, and

occasionally, in a fit of would-be-young-again, gave her huge frame a

motion on the promenade-deck that looked for all the world like the

wallowing of a great sea-turtle in shallow water. She was of Spanish

descent, and seemed delighted to show off her mastery of this foreign

tongue, to the astonishment of the wonder-wounded Dutchmen, who,

attracted by her bright-red mantle trimmed with ermine, and amazed at

her knowledge of the strange tongue, gazed upon her with a sort of

stupid reverence."

At Hamburg he attended a performance of Schiller's "Don Carlos," in

the great Stadt Theatre. "The building is very commodious, but badly

lighted by a single lustre depending from the dome. The play began at

half-past six and ended at eleven, and, as it seemed to me, was but

indifferently well represented. During these four and a half hours the

people paid the closest attention and showed no sign of uneasiness. How

an American audience would have shuffled!"

In Hamburg Forrest had his first experience of a Russian bath. His own

description of this is interesting, as the delight in baths of all

kinds was a growing passion with him even to the very last.

"Having reduced myself to nudity, a signal was given from an adjoining

apartment, like the theatrical noises which attend the splitting of

the charmed rock in the 'Forty Thieves.' A door now was opened upon

the side, a blanket thrown over my shoulders, and I was told in German

to go in. I obeyed. This was a small room, where the thermometer rose

to about one hundred. Here the blanket was taken from my shoulders,

and a door beyond opened, and in stalked a naked man, who motioned

me to follow him. I did so. I passed the portal, and was immediately

enveloped in steam and heat up at least to a hundred and ten of

Fahrenheit. This chamber was of oval shape, and had on one side three

or four shelves of wood, rising one above the other, on the first of

which I was told to sit down. After striving to breathe here for five

or six minutes, I was invited to sit upon the next, and after a certain

time to the next, and so on until I reached the last, near the ceiling,

where the heat must have been at least a hundred and twenty. By this

time the perspiration became profuse, and poured off in torrents.

The attendant now told me to descend to the third shelf; and then he

commenced rubbing and whipping me with fragrant twigs. Then I was

rubbed with soap, then told to stand in the centre of the floor, when

in a moment I was deluged with a shower of cold water, which seemed to

realize to me the refreshing thought of the poison-fevered monarch who

wished his kingdom's rivers might flow through his burning bosom. My

probation was now nearly over,--three-quarters of an hour at least in

this steaming purgatory. I returned to the first apartment, where I was

laid, almost exhausted, upon a couch, and covered with at least a dozen

blankets. Again the perspiration broke out upon me, and a boy stood by

to wipe the huge drops from my face and brow. One by one the blankets

were removed, and I was rubbed dry with white towels. Then I dressed

myself, paid for the bath, about a dollar, and something to the boys.

As I walked into the street, the atmosphere never before seemed so

pure. Every breath was like a delicious draught. At every step I felt

returning strength, and in about a half an hour a bottle of hock and a

dozen oysters made Richard wholly himself again."

At St. Petersburg Forrest found much to interest him, especially the

tomb of Peter the Great, the numerous relics and specimens of his

handiwork so carefully preserved, and the magnificent equestrian statue

by Falconet, erected in his honor by Catherine. While crossing a bridge

that spans the Neva, he one day observed a covered boat gliding

beneath, manned by half a dozen soldiers. On inquiry, he learned that

the boat contained some Polish noblemen who had been condemned to

slavery and chains for the crime of loving liberty and their country

too well. He describes a visit to the Palace of the Hermitage, where

there was a fine collection of paintings, among them one ascribed to

Jules Romain,--a very curious representation of the creation of woman.

"Adam is asleep, like a melodramatic hero just fallen into a reverie,

with his head resting on his right hand, quite in an attitude. The

Deity, as usual, is given as an infirm old man dressed in azure, and is

pointing to the side of our primeval parent, out of which mother Eve

seems to slide like a thief from his hiding-place!"

Moscow he found still more attractive and imposing, with its long,

romantic story, and the sublime tragedy of its conflagration in the

presence of the terror-struck army of Napoleon. A single extract from

his diary will suffice: "Went to the Kremlin. Passed the Holy Gate

with my hat on, unconscious of the _sacred_ precincts until a boor

of a Russian grunted at my ear and with violent gestures motioned

toward my head. It then struck me this must be the Holy Gate, through

which none dare pass without being uncovered. But, as I did not like

to be browbeaten into respect for their 'brazen images,' I passed

on sans cérémonie and without molestation. I walked to the terrace

which overlooks the gardens and the river, and looked down upon the

magnificent city, with her gorgeous palaces, her innumerable cupolas

and domes, dazzling amid the bright sunbeams with azure and gold. I

stood by the ancient residence of the Tsars, the scene of so much

history; and as I glanced over the immense assemblage of stately

structures spread far and wide across the vast plain below, all beaming

with as much freshness as if by the voice of magic they had just been

called into existence, my eyes drank in more delight than they ever

had before in looking upon a city, save only when in early life,

after an absence of years from my native place, I revisited my home.

The spectacle which Moscow presented was at the same time novel and

sublime. Its varied architecture was at once Oriental, Gothic, and

Classic, the delicate towering minarets of the East and the beauteous

majesty of the Grecian blending with the

'tall Gothic pile

Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads,

Bearing aloft the arched and ponderous roof.

Which by its own weight stands immovable.'

"At night, it being the anniversary of the coronation of the Emperor,

the gardens about the Kremlin were magnificently illuminated, and

crowded, perhaps, with two hundred thousand people. The walls and

turrets of the Kremlin were filled with lamps wrought into the most

grotesque shapes and festooned with innumerable lights. So were the

trees, and in the dark and luxuriant foliage of the gardens they looked

'Like winged flowers or flying gems.'"

From Moscow Forrest journeyed to Odessa, and thence through the Crimea

to Constantinople. Passing Balaklava and Inkerman and Sevastopol,

with what emotions he would have gazed about him could he but have

foreseen the terrific battles that were in twenty years' time to rage

there between the stubborn Slavonic power on one side and the leagued

array of France, England, and Turkey on the other! No such premonition

visiting his mind, he plodded on through the weary wastes till he

reached Aloupka, where the Count Woronzoff, General Nerisken, and the

Prince Gallitzin were resident proprietors of estates and lived in

sumptuous style. The Gallitzin family were intimate acquaintances of

that remarkable Russian lady, Madame Swetchine, whose conversion from

the Greek Church to the Roman, whose rare character and genius, great

friendships and brilliant salon in Paris, have secured for her name

such high and permanent celebrity.

Taking a horse and a guide, Forrest started out from Aloupka to explore

one of the neighboring Tartar villages.

"The houses are small, and generally built," he writes, "of stone,

with flat roofs made of logs covered with dirt and clay, smoothed so

as to form a comfortable floor to dry tobacco or grain upon. I asked

permission to enter one of the huts, which was immediately granted. I

found the clay floor scrupulously clean, the fire-place nicely swept,

and some woollen cloths spread upon raised surfaces on the sides of the

room, which seemed to serve as beds. The woman had a silver belt about

her, which, when I admired it, she took off and handed to me. I put it

around my waist. At this the children laughed. I gave them some money,

and mounted my horse and rode to the village church,--or mosque, as

they are Mohammedans. It was an old building of wood and stone, with

a ruinous wooden tower by its side, from which they cry to prayers.

I entered it. No one was there. There was a small wooden gallery at

one end, to which they ascend by a ladder. It was a shabby and dismal

place, and I hurried out of it back to the hotel."

On the following day, with his friend Wikoff, Forrest dined with

the Count Woronzoff. "At five o'clock a cannon is fired as a signal

to dress for dinner. In a half an hour a second gun is fired, and

the guests are seated. Soon after the first gun we started for the

castle. I saw there for the first time the Countess Sabanska. I paid

my respects to her and retired to another part of the room, as she

was talking with several gentlemen. She was very animated in her

conversation, with particularly vivid gesticulation and expression of

face. The Count's Tartar interpreter was playing billiards with one

of the attendants. In a few minutes the Count and Countess entered,

followed by a train of ladies and gentlemen. He introduced me to his

lady, also to Madame Nerisken and the Princess Gallitzin and her

daughter. I led Madame Nerisken to the table, and sat between her

and the Countess Woronzoff, whom I found to be a most agreeable and

interesting woman. Count Woronzoff sat opposite, with the Princess

Gallitzin on one side and the Countess Sabanska on the other. The

conversation, conducted in French, was anything but intellectual, as

the growth of the prince's vines seemed the all-absorbing topic. The

Countess Sabanska had now changed her whole manner from the extreme

vivacity and gayety she first evinced, and had become silent and

melancholy. Her thoughts seemed to be far away. How I should have liked

to read the depths of her soul and know what was moving there! After

dinner some of the ladies smoked cigarettes, and others played cards."

Constantinople opened to Forrest a fascinating glimpse of the

civilization of the East, with its ancient races of men, its strange

architecture and religious rites, its poetic costumes, its impressive

manners, and that glamour of mystery over all which makes Oriental life

seem to the Western traveller such a contrast to everything he has

been wonted to at home. He made the most of his time here in visiting

the historic monuments and trying to penetrate the open secrets of

Moslem habits and Turkish character; and he brought away with him,

on his departure for Greece, a crowd of mental pictures which never

lost their clearness or their interest. For the history of the city

of Constantine has been most rich in romance; and the scene unveiled

to the voyager who approaches it by daylight or by moonlight is a

vision of enchantment,--a wilderness of mosques, domes, cupolas, solemn

cypresses, and spouting fountains. On a beautiful day, when not a cloud

was in the sky nor a ripple on the Bosphorus, Forrest was surveying

the city and its environs from a boat in the midst of the bay, when he

saw, slowly approaching, a sumptuous barge, with awnings of silk and

gold, a banner with the crescent and inscriptions in Arabic floating

above, and a group of turbaned guards, with scimitars in their hands,

half surrounding a man reclined on a purple divan. "Who is that?" asked

Forrest of the guide. "That is the Padishah," was the reply. Forrest,

ignorant of this title of "the Shah of Shahs" for the Sultan of Turkey,

understood the guide to say, Paddy Shaw! and, supposing it to be some

rich Irishman who was cutting such a figure in the Golden Horn, was so

struck by the absurdity that he laughed aloud. The measured strokes

of the rowers, regular as a piece of solemn music, meanwhile had

brought the imperial freight nearly alongside. The guards looked at the

laughing tragedian as if they would have liked to chop his head off, or

bowstring him and sink him in a sack. The Sultan looked slowly at the

audacious American, without the slightest change of expression in his

sad, dark, impassive face,--and the two striking figures, so unlike,

were soon out of sight of each other forever!

Passing over the notes of his tour in Greece, as covering matters

now hackneyed from the descriptions given by hundreds of more recent

travellers and published in every kind of literary form, a single

extract from a letter to his mother is perhaps worthy of citation:

"From Constantinople I went to Smyrna, and thence into Greece. Here I

am now, at last, in the city of Athens, the glorious home not only of

the Drama, but also of so much else that has passed into the life of

mankind. Alas, how changed! With all the power of imagination which

I can conjure up, I am hardly able to convince myself that this was

the once proud city of Pericles, Plato, Æschylus, Demosthenes, and the

other men whose names have sounded so grand in the mouths of posterity.

Looking on the tumbled temples and desolate walls, I have exclaimed

with Byron,--

'Ancient of days! august Athena, where,

Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?

Gone,--glimmering through the dream of things that were.

First in the race that led to Glory's goal,--

They're sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower,

Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.'"

A personal adventure, also, that befell him at Athens, must not be

omitted. One beautiful afternoon, he had been inspecting the Parthenon

and what remained of its sculptured ornaments. Near where he stood, a

heap of skulls lay on the ground, skulls of some of the victims of the

last revolution, who had fallen in a battle of the Greeks and Turks.

His attention was drawn to the phrenological developments of several

of these skulls. Chancing at that moment to look down towards the

temple of Theseus, he saw, only a short distance from him, a man glide

from behind a column and walk away. The man was clad in the costume of

an Albanian, one of the most picturesque costumes in the world, and

looked as if he had freshly stepped out of a painting,--so beautiful

was the combination of symmetry in his form, grace in his motion, and

beauty in his dress. Perfectly fascinated, Forrest hastened forward and

addressed the stranger in English, in French, in Spanish; but vain was

every attempt to make himself understood. Just then Hill, the American

missionary for many years at Athens, came along. Forrest accosted him

with the inquiry, "Do you know who that man is yonder?" and, as much to

his amazement as to his delight, received the answer, "Why, do you not

know him? That is the son of Marco Bozzaris!" The lines of his friend

Halleck,--

"And she, the mother of thy boys.

Will, by her pilgrim-circled hearth,

Talk of thy doom without a sigh;

For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's;

One of the few, the immortal names

That were not born to die,"--

these lines, and his own parting scene with their author in New York

harbor, flashed into his mind, and he felt as if this incident alone

were enough to repay him for his whole journey.

On his return once more to Paris, in a letter to his friend Leggett he

sketches in epitome the ground he has been over. An extract follows:

"Since I saw you, I have indeed been in strange lands, and seen

strange sights. I have traversed the Baltic and the wide dominions

of the ambitious Autocrat,--crossed the Euxine and dipped into

Asia and European Turkey,--'kept due onwards to the Propontic and

Hellespont,'--wandered amid the faultless fragments of the 'bright

clime of battle and of song,'--sailed by the Ionian Isles,--visited

the chief towns of the Germanic Confederation,--and here I am at last,

safe and sound, in the ever-gay capital of France. I thank Heaven my

travelling in the 'far East' is at an end. One is badly accommodated

there in railroads and steamers. However, take it for all in all,

I have every reason to be satisfied with the voyage, for there is

no kind of information but must be purchased with some painstaking,

and one day I shall fully enjoy all this in calm retrospection from

the bosom of the unpruned woods of my own country. Yes, the sight

of the city of Moscow alone would amply repay one for all risks and

fatigues at sea. Never shall I forget my sensations when, from the

great tower of the Kremlin, one bright, sunny day, I looked down upon

that beautiful city. The numberless domes, beaming with azure and

with gold, the checkered roofs, the terraces, the garden slopes, the

mingling of all the styles and systems of architectural construction,

now massive and heavy, now brilliant and light, and everywhere fresh

and original, enchanted me. I am free to confess Russia astonished

me. I have sailed down the mighty Mississippi,--I have been in the

dark and silent bosom of our own forest homes,--I have been under

the eye of Mont Blanc and Olympus,--I grew familiar with Rome and

with London,--without experiencing the same degree of wonder which

fastened upon me in Russia. I thought there to have encountered with

hordes of semi-barbarians, yet I found a people raised, as it were,

at once from a state of nature to our level of civilization. Nor have

they apparently, in their rapid onward course, neglected the _means_

to render their progress sure. And then, what an army,--a million

of men! and the best forms of men,--the best disciplined, and able

to endure the 'labored battle sweat' by their constant activity, the

rigor of their climate, and their ignorance of all pleasures which

serve to effeminate. The navy, too, though in an imperfect state

compared with the army (in sailors, not ships), will doubtless soon

hold a distinguished rank. Only think of such a power, increasing

every day,--stretching out wider and wider, and all confessing one

duty,--obedience to the will of the absolute sovereign!"

About this time two significant entries are found in his diary. The

first one is: "Received intelligence of the death of Edwin Forrest

Goodman, the infant son of a friend.

'All his innocent thoughts

Like rose-leaves scattered.'"

The second is this: "And so Jane Placide is dead. The theatrical people

of New Orleans then have lost much. She imparted a grace and a force

and dignity to her rôle which few actresses have been able so admirably

to combine. She excelled in a profession in the arduous sphere of which

even to succeed requires uncommon gifts, both mental and physical. Her

disposition was as lovely as her person. Heaven lodge and rest her fair

soul!"

The reader will recollect Miss Placide as the friend about whom young

Forrest quarrelled with Caldwell and withdrew from his service. How

strangely the millions of influences or spirits that weave our fate fly

to and fro with the threads of the weft and woof! While he was writing

the above words in the capital of France, her remains were sleeping in

a quiet cemetery of the far South, on the other side of the world, with

the inscription on the slab above her,--

"There's not an hour

Of day or dreamy night but I am with thee;

There's not a wind but whispers o'er thy name,

And not a flower that sleeps beneath the moon

But in its hues of fragrance tells a tale

Of thee."

He passed over to England again, to visit a few spots sacred in

his imagination which he had not seen in his former journey there.

Chief among these were the house and grave of Shakspeare, at

Stratford-upon-Avon. With the eagerness and devotion arising from the

lifelong enthusiasm of all his professional studies and experience,

reinforced by the feeling of the accumulated homage paid at that shrine

by mankind at large, he wandered and mused in the places once so

familiar with the living presence of the poet, and still seeming to be

suffused with his invisible presence. In the day he had made a careful

exploration of the church where the unapproachable dramatist lies

sepulchred. Late in the evening, when the moon was riding half-way up

the heaven, he clambered over the fence, and, while the gentle current

of Avon was lapping the sedges on its shore almost at his feet, gazed

in at the window and saw the moonbeams silvering the bust of the dead

master on the wall, and the carved letters of the quaint and dread

inscription on his tomb,--

"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear

To dig the dust encloséd here.

Blessed be he who spares these stones,

And cursed be he who moves my bones."

What a contrast the picture of him in this night-scene at the

church-window would have made for those familiar with his appearance on

the stage in the wrath of Coriolanus, the remorse of Macbeth, the sneer

of Richard, the horror of Othello, or the tempest of Lear!

It now lacked but a few days of being two years since Forrest left

America, and he began to feel powerfully drawn homewards. It had been

a period of unalloyed satisfaction, and he had much improved in many

ways, from his intercourse with different forms and classes of society,

from his contemplation of natural scenery in many lands, from his study

of the masterpieces of art, from his criticism of the performances

of the distinguished actors and actresses whom he saw, and from his

reading of many valuable books, including, among lighter volumes, such

works as those of Locke and Spinoza. In this long tour and deliberate

tarry abroad, wisely chosen in his early manhood, before his nature had

hardened in routine, with plenty of money, leisure, health, freedom,

and aspiration, he had drunk his fill of joy. His brain and spine and

ganglia saturated with an amorous drench of elemental force, drunk with

every kind of potency, he swayed on his centres in revelling fulness of

life. He had been in these two exempted years like Hercules in Olympus,

with abundance of ambrosia and nectar and Hebe on his knee. But now

his heart cried out for home, and the sense of duty urged him to gird

up his loins for work again. Something of his feeling may be guessed

from the fact that he had copied into his journal these lines of Byron:

"What singular emotions fill

Their bosoms who have been induced to roam,

With fluttering doubts if all be well or ill,

With love for many and with tears for some;

All feelings which o'erleap the years long lost,

And bring our hearts back to the starting-post."

He took passage in the Poland, and, with no notable adventure on the

voyage, arrived at New York on the 5th of August, 1836, to be received

with cheers into the open arms of a crowd of his friends as he stepped

ashore, prouder than ever of his birthright of American citizenship.

CHAPTER XI.

PROFESSIONAL TOUR IN GREAT BRITAIN.

Two weeks of rest in his Philadelphia home, in delightful reunion with

his mother and sisters, and two weeks more devoted to the banquets

and parties with which his rejoicing friends there and in New York

celebrated his return, passed quickly. He had now to prepare to say

good-bye again. For overtures of such a flattering character had

been made to him while in England to return and give a series of

performances in the principal British theatres, that he had accepted

them, and was engaged to be there early in October. The desire,

however, after his long absence, to see him on the stage was so

general, and was urged so eagerly, that he determined to appear for

a few nights. Accordingly, he played the parts of Damon, Othello,

and Spartacus for five nights in the Chestnut Street Theatre, in

Philadelphia, and the same parts, with the addition of Lear, in the

Park Theatre, in New York. The crowd and the excitement on the opening

night were almost unprecedented, all the passages to the house being

blocked with applicants two hours before the rising of the curtain.

At the first glimpse of the actor in his stately senatorial garb, the

multitude that filled the entire auditorium with a packed mass of faces

rose as by one impulse and hailed him with deafening applause, kept up

until it seemed as if it was not to end. He had never played better, by

general consent, than he did this night. And when the play closed, and

the enthusiastic ovation which had saluted his entrance was repeated,

he certainly had every reason to feel in truth what he expressed in

words:

"Ladies and gentlemen, for this warm peal of hands and hearts I have

only strength in my present exhausted state to say, I thank you. It

convinces me that neither time nor distance has been able to alienate

from me your kind regards. I am unable to speak what I wish; but

I can sincerely say that you make me proud this evening. And the

remembrance of the cordial greeting, after no common absence, given

me here in this city of my birth and my affection, will go down with

me to my latest hour as one of the happiest scenes of my professional

life."

A similar reception, only, if possible, still more flattering in the

vastness of the throng and the fervor of the tributes, awaited him in

New York. Box tickets were sold at auction for twenty-five dollars

each,--a fact to which there had not at that time been anything like a

parallel known in this country. For his six performances he received

three thousand dollars, and the profit of the manager was estimated

at six thousand dollars. The public greeted his strong points with a

warmth which seemed to show that their admiration had grown during

his absence, and the critics spoke of an evident improvement in his

acting,--that it was less boisterous and more thoughtful than formerly.

Called out at the conclusion of the play, Othello, on the occasion of

his farewell, he alluded with deep emotions to the night, some ten

years before, when he had made his first appearance before a New York

audience. Then, a mere youth, just emerging from severe hardships,

and still oppressed by poverty and a dark prospect, with scarcely a

friend, he had tremblingly ventured to enact the part of Othello for

the benefit of a distressed brother-actor. The generous approbation

then given him had lent a new zeal to his ambition and a new strength

to his motives. From that hour his course had been one of unbroken

prosperity, for which he desired to return his most heartfelt thanks

to his countrymen, and to assure them that he would do his best not

to dishonor them in the mother-country, to which he was then bound.

"I shall carry with me," he added, "an indelible remembrance of your

kindness; and I hope that the recollection will be mutual, so that I

may say, with the divine Shakspeare,--

'Our separation so abides and flies

That yon, remaining here, yet go with me,

And I, hence fleeting, still remain with you.'"

The audience responded to his speech with tempestuous huzzas, and he

withdrew, carrying this flattering scene fresh in his memory as he set

sail for his courageous enterprise on the other side of the sea.

It was a courageous and somewhat ominous adventure. For it is to be

remembered that the relationships of England and the United States were

very different in 1836 from what they are in our day. The memories

of the Revolutionary war and of the war of 1812 were still keen and

bitter; and the feelings of intellectual inferiority and literary

vassalage to the mother-country among the Americans engendered a sense

of wounded pride or irritable jealousy excessively sensitive to British

criticism, which, on the other hand, was generally marked by a tone of

complacent arrogance or condescending patronage. No American actor, at

least none of any note, had yet appeared on the boards in England. All

such international favors were on the other side,--and they had been

most numerous and long-continued. The illustrious Cooper, an Englishman

by birth and education, though so long domesticated in this country

both as citizen and actor as to be almost considered an American, had

been ignominiously hooted down on the most famous stage in London

amidst opprobrious cries of "Away with the Yankee! Send him back!" What

reception now would be vouchsafed to an American tragedian, fresh from

nature and the woods of the West, and all untrained in the methods of

the schools, who should dare essay to rival the glorious traditions

of old Drury Lane within her own walls?--this was a question which

caused many wise heads to shake with misgivings, and might well have

deterred any less fearless spirit than that of Forrest from putting it

to the test. But he believed, obvious as the antipathies and jealousies

between the two countries were, that the fellow-feeling and the love of

fair play were far stronger. In a speech delivered in his native city

the evening before his departure, he expressed himself thus:

"The engagement which I am about to fulfil in London was not of my

seeking. While I was in England I was repeatedly importuned with

solicitations, and the most liberal offers were made to me. I finally

consented, not for my own sake, for my ambition is satisfied with the

applauses of my own countrymen, but partly in compliance with the

wishes of a number of American friends, and partly to solve a doubt

which is entertained by many of our citizens, whether Englishmen would

receive an American actor with the same favor which is here extended

to them. This doubt, so far as I have had an opportunity of judging,

is, I think, without foundation. During my residence in England, I

found among the English people the most unbounded hospitality, and

the warmest affection for my beloved country and her institutions.

With this impression, I have resolved to present to them an American

tragedy, supported by the humble efforts of the individual who stands

before you. If I fail--I fail. But, whatever may be the result, the

approbation of that public which first stamped the native dramatist and

actor will ever be my proudest recollection."

Of all the friends to whom Forrest bade adieu, not one beside was

so dear to him as Leggett. The heart-ties between them had been

multiplied, enriched, and tightened by unwearied mutual acts of

kindness and service, and a thousand congenial interchanges of soul in

intimate hours when the world was shut out and their bosoms were opened

to each other without disguise or reserve. The letter here added speaks

for itself:

"OFFICE OF THE EVENING POST,

"NEW YORK, Sept. 19th, 1836.

"DEAR MADAM,--I had the pleasure of accompanying your son Edwin

yesterday as far as Sandy Hook, and seeing him safely on his way for

Liverpool, with a fine breeze, in a fine ship, and with a fine set of

fellow-passengers. He was accompanied down the bay by a large number

of his friends, who, on the steamboat parting from the ship, expressed

their warm feelings for him in many rounds of loud and hearty cheers.

We kept in sight of the vessel till near sundown, by which time she

had made a good offing. Andrew Allen had gone on board with his

baggage the day previous, and everything was prepared for him in the

most comfortable manner. While we were on board the vessel with him,

we were invited by the captain to sit down to a collation prepared for

the occasion, and had the satisfaction of drinking to his health and

prosperous voyage, not only across the Atlantic Ocean, but across the

ocean of life also, in a glass of sparkling champagne. It would have

given me the most unbounded happiness to have been able to accompany

him to Europe, as he desired; but circumstances rendered it impossible

for me to gratify that wish. I am with him in _heart_, however, and

shall look most eagerly for the tidings of his safe arrival and

triumphant reception. Whatever news I get concerning him which I

think may be of interest to you, I shall take pleasure in immediately

communicating. Mrs. Leggett bade me remember her most affectionately

to you and your daughters, and to say that, should you visit New York

at any time during your son's absence, she shall expect you to make

her house your home. In this wish I most fully concur. Allow me to

assure you, madam, that

"With great respect,

"I am your obed't serv't,

"WM. LEGGETT.

"MRS. REBECCA FORREST."

James K. Paulding, a close and dear friend of Forrest, met him one

sunshiny day in New York at the corner of Nassau and Ann Streets,

and expostulated with him against going across the sea to play.

"Washington," he said, "never went to Europe to gain an immortality.

Jackson never went there to extend his fame. Many others of our

greatest and most original men never visited the other hemisphere to

add lustre to their names. And why should you? Stay here, and build

yourself an enduring place in the mind of your own country alone. That

is enough for any man!" He spoke with extreme eloquence, heedless of

the busy throng who hurried by absorbed in so different a world from

that whose prospects kindled the idealistic and ambitious friends.

When Forrest was sailing out of the harbor, he recalled these words

with strong emotion, and felt for a moment as if he were guilty of a

sort of treachery to his own land in thus leaving it. Though the whole

incident, as here set down, may appear overstrained, it is a true

glimpse of life.

Forrest made his first professional appearance in England in Drury Lane

Theatre, on the evening of the 17th of October, 1836, in the rôle of

Spartacus, before an audience which crowded the house in every part

to its utmost capacity. His great American fame had preceded him, and

there was an intense curiosity felt as to the result of his experiment.

The solicitude was especially keen among the two or three hundred of

his countrymen who were present, and who knew the extreme democratic

quality of the play of the Gladiator. The tremendous bursts of applause

which his entrance called out soon put an end to all doubt or anxiety.

The favor in advance certified by the unanimous and long-continued

cheers he confirmed at every step of the performance, and wrought to

an extraordinary pitch at the close, when he was recalled before the

curtain and greeted with overwhelming plaudits. He returned his thanks

for the honor done him, and was loudly applauded when he said he was

sure that England and America were joined by the closest good-will, and

that the more enlightened portion of their population were superior

to any feeling of national jealousy. But on attempting to include the

author of the Gladiator in the approving verdict which the audience had

given himself, he was interrupted by numerous protests and repeated

cries, "Let us see you in some of Shakspeare's characters!"

The Courier of the next morning said,--

"America has at length vindicated her capability of producing a native

dramatist of the highest order, whose claims should be unequivocally

acknowledged by the Mother Country; and has rendered back some portion

of the dramatic debt so long due to us in return for the Cookes, the

Keans, the Macreadys, the Knowleses, and the Kembles, whom she has,

through a long series of years, seduced, at various times, to her

shores,--the so long doubted problem being happily solved by Mr. Edwin

Forrest, the American tragedian, who made his first appearance last

night on these boards, with a success as triumphant as could have been

desired by his most enthusiastic admirers on the other side of the

Atlantic. Of the numerous striking situations and touching passages in

the play, Mr. Forrest availed himself with great tact, discrimination,

and effect; now astounding all eyes and ears by the overwhelming

energy of his physical powers, and now subduing all hearts by the

pathos of his voice, manner, and expression. The whole weight of the

piece rests upon him alone, and nobly does he sustain it. His action

is easy, graceful, and varied; and his declamation is perfectly free

from the usual stage chant, catchings, and points. Indeed, nature

alone seems to have been his only model."

The "Sun" of the same date said,--

"Mr. Edwin Forrest, who has long held the first rank as a tragic actor

in America, made his first appearance here last night in a new drama,

also of American growth, entitled the _Gladiator_. The acting of Mr.

Forrest as Spartacus was throughout admirable. His very figure and

voice were in his favor, the one being strongly muscular, the other

replete with a rough music befitting one who in his youth has dwelt,

a free barbarian, among the mountains. He electrified his audience;

indeed, we have not heard more enthusiastic bursts of applause shake

the walls of an English theatre since _Othello_ expired with poor

Kean. The great recommendations of Mr. Forrest as a tragedian we take

to be strong passion, and equally strong judgment. In the whirlwind

of his emotions he never loses sight of self-control. He is the

master, not the slave, of his feelings. He appeals to no fastidious

coterie for applause; he is not remarkable for the delivery of this or

that pretty tinkling poetic passage; still less is he burdened with

refined sensibility, which none but the select few can understand; far

otherwise; he gives free play to those rough natural passions which

are intelligible all the world over. His pathos is equally sincere and

unsophisticated. His delivery of the passage,--

'And one day hence,

My darling boy, too, may be fatherless,'--

was marked by the truest and tenderest sensibility. Equally successful

was he in that pleasing pastoral idea,--

'And Peace was tinkling in the shepherd's bells,

And singing with the reapers;'

which, had it been written in Claude's days, that great painter would

undoubtedly have made the subject of one of his best landscapes.

'Famine shrieked in the empty corn-fields,'--

a striking image, which immediately follows the preceding one, was

given by Mr. Forrest with an energy amounting almost to the sublime.

Not less impressive was his delivery of

'There are no Gods in heaven,'

which bursts from him when he hears of the murder of his wife and

child by the Roman cohorts. Mr. Forrest has made such a hit as has

not been made since the memorable 1814, when Edmund Kean burst on

England in Shylock. America may well feel proud of him; for though

he is not, strictly speaking, what is called a classical actor, yet

he has all the energy, all the indomitable love of freedom that

characterizes the transatlantic world. We say this because there were

many republican allusions in the play where the man spoke out quite as

much as the actor, if not more. Having seen him in Spartacus, we no

longer wonder at his having electrified the New World. A man better

fitted by nature and art to sustain such a character, and a character

better fitted to turn the heads of a nation which was the other day in

arms against England, never appeared on the boards of a theatre. At

the fall of the curtain he received such a tempest of approbation as

we have not witnessed for years."

The Morning Advertiser said,--

"When to the facts of a new play and a new actor is superadded the

circumstance that both the author and the player of the new tragedy

are Americans, and the first who ever tempted the intellectual taste

of the British public by a representation on the English stage,

the crowds which last night surrounded the doors long before they

were thrown open are easily accounted for. The applause which Mr.

Forrest received on his _entrée_ must have been very cheering to that

gentleman. He possesses a countenance well marked and classical; his

figure, a model for stage effect, with 'thew and sinew' to boot. His

enunciation, which we had anticipated to be characterized by some

degree of that _patois_ which distinguishes most Americans, even the

best educated, was almost perfect 'to the last recorded syllable,'

and fell like music on the ears. We here especially point to the less

declamatory passages of the drama; in those portions of it where he

threw his whole power of body and soul into the whirlwind, as it were,

of his fury, his display of physical strength was prodigious, without

'o'erstepping the modesty of nature.' The inflections of his voice

frequently reminded one of Kean in his healthiest days, yet there

did not appear the manner of a copyist. He was crowned with loud and

unanimous plaudits at least a dozen times during the representation."

The Court Journal gave its judgment thus:

"This chief of American performers is most liberally endowed by nature

with all the finest qualities for an actor. With a most graceful and

symmetrical person, of more than the ordinary stature, he has a face

capable of the sternest as of the nicest delineations of passion,

and a voice of deep and earnest power. We have never witnessed a

presence more noble and commanding,--one that, at the first moment,

challenged greater respect, we may write, admiration. As an actor,

Mr. Forrest is fervent, passionate, and active: there is no child's

play in whatever he does; but in the most serious, as in the slightest

development of feeling, he puts his whole heart into the matter, and

carries us away with him in either the subtlety or the strength of his

emotion. With powers evidently enabling him to outroar a whirlwind, he

is never extravagant,--he is never of 'Ercles' vein; his passion is

always from the heart, and never from the lungs. His last two scenes

were splendidly acted, from the strength, the self-abandonment of the

performer; he looked and moved as if he could have cut down a whole

cohort, and died like a Hercules. The reception of Mr. Forrest was

most cordial; and the applause bestowed upon him throughout the play

unbounded. At the conclusion of the tragedy he was called for, and

most rapturously greeted."

The Times described the figure, face, and voice of the actor, gave a

long abstract of the play, and said,--

"He played with his whole heart, and seemed to be so strongly imbued

with the part that every tone and gesture were perfectly natural, and

full of that fire and spirit which, engendered by true feeling, carry

an audience along with the performer. He made a powerful impression on

the audience, and must be regarded as an able performer who to very

considerable skill in his profession adds the attraction of a somewhat

novel and much more spirited style of playing than any other tragic

actor now on our stage."

The following extract is from the Atlas:

"If we were to estimate Mr. Forrest's merits by his performance of

the Gladiator, we should, probably, underrate, or, perhaps, mistake

the true character of his genius. The very qualities which render him

supreme in such a part would, if he possessed no other requisites,

unfit him for those loftier conceptions that constitute the highest

efforts of the stage. It would be impossible to produce a more

powerful performance, or one in all respects more just and complete,

than his representation of the moody savage Thracian. But nature has

given him peculiar advantages which harmonize with the demands of

the part, and which, in almost any other character in the range of

tragedy, would either encumber the delineation or be of no avail.

His figure is cast in the proportions of the Farnese Hercules. The

development of the muscles, indeed, rather exceeds the ideal of

strength, and, in its excess, the beauty of symmetrical power is

in some degree sacrificed. His head and neck are perfect models of

grandeur in the order to which they belong. His features are boldly

marked, full of energy and expression, and, although not capable of

much variety, they possess a remarkable tone of _mental_ vigor. His

voice is rich and deep, and susceptible of extraordinary transitions,

which he employs somewhat too frequently as the transitions of

feeling pass over his spirit. The best way, perhaps, of describing

its varieties is to say that it reminded us occasionally of Kean,

Vandenhoff, and Wallack, but not as they would be recalled by one who,

in the dearth of his own resources, imitated them for convenience,

but by one in whom such resemblances are natural and unpremeditated.

Mr. Forrest's action is bold, unconscious, and diversified; and the

predominant sentiment it inspires is that of athletic grace. In the

part of Spartacus all these characteristics were brought out in the

most favorable points of view; and the performance, exhausting from

its length and its internal force, was sustained to the close with

undiminished power. There is certainly no actor on the English stage

who could have played it with a tithe of Mr. Forrest's ability."

In response to the invitation or challenge to appear in some of the

great Shakspearean rôles, Forrest appeared many nights successively

in Othello, Macbeth, and Lear, and in them all was crowned with most

decisive and flattering triumphs. The praise of him by the press was

generous, and its chorus scarcely broken by the few dissenting voices,

whose tone plainly betrayed an animus of personal hostility. A few

examples of the newspaper notices may fitly be cited,--enough to give a

fair idea of the general impression he made.

The Globe, of October 25th:

"Mr. Forrest selected as his second character the fiery Othello, 'who

loved not wisely, but too well.' There was something nobly daring in

this flight, so soon, too, after he whose voice still dwells in our

ears had passed from among us. To essay before an English audience any

character in which Edmund Kean was remembered was itself no trifling

indication of that self-confidence which, when necessary, true genius

can manifest. To make that attempt in Othello was indeed daring.

And nobly, we feel proud to say, did the performance bear out the

promise. In the Senate scene his colloquial voice told well in the

celebrated address to the Seniors of Venice. He did not speak as if

the future evils of his life had even then cast their shadows upon

him. The calm equability of the triumphant general and successful

lover pervaded his performance throughout the first two acts, with

the exception of the scene of the drunken brawl in the second, where

he first gave token of the fiery elements within him. The third act

was a splendid presentment throughout. He had evidently studied the

character with the judgment of a scholar, 'and a ripe and good one:'

each shade of the jealous character of the easy Moor, from the first

faint guessings at his tempter's meaning to the full conviction of his

wife's dishonesty, was brought out with the touch of a master-hand,

and embodied with a skill equalling that of any actor whom we have

seen, and far, very far superior to the manner in which any other of

our living performers could attempt it. This third act alone would

have placed Mr. Forrest in the foremost rank of his profession had

he never done anything else; and so his kindling audience seemed to

feel, as much in the deep watching silence of their attention as in

the tremendous plaudits which hailed what on the stage are technically

called 'the points' he made.

"In the two succeeding acts he was equally great in the passages which

called forth the burning passions of his fiery soul; but we shall not

at present particularize; where all was good it would be difficult,

and we have already nearly run through the dictionary of panegyric. In

accordance with a burst of applause such as seldom follows the fall of

the curtain, _Othello_ was announced for repetition on Wednesday and

Friday."

The commendation of the London Sun was still stronger:

"Mr. Forrest last night made his appearance here in the arduous

character of Othello. The experiment was a bold one, but was

completely successful. We entertain a vivid recollection of Kean in

this part; we saw his Moor when the great actor was in the meridian

vigor of his powers, and also when he was in his decline and could

do justice only to the more subdued and pathetic parts of the

character; and even with these recollections on our mind, we feel

ourselves justified in saying that Mr. Forrest's Othello, if here

and there inferior in execution to Kean's, was in conception far

superior. There is an elevation of thought and sentiment,--a poetic

grandeur,--a picturesqueness, if we may use such an expression, in

Mr. Forrest's notion of the character, which Kean could never reach.

The one could give electrical effect to all its more obvious points,

turn to admirable account all that lay on its surface; the other

sounds its depths,--turns it inside out,--apprehends it in a learned

and imaginative spirit, and shows us not merely the fiery, generous

warrior, the creature of impulse, but the high-toned, chivalrous

Moor; lofty and dignified in his bearing, and intellectual in his

nature,--such a Moor, in short, as we read of in the old Spanish

chronicles of Granada,--and who perpetrates an act of murder not so

much from the headstrong, animal promptings of revenge, as from an

idea that he is offering up a solemn and inevitable sacrifice to

justice. In the earlier portion of the character Mr. Forrest was

rather too drawling and measured in his delivery; his address to the

Senators was judicious, but not quite familiar enough; it should

have been more colloquial. It was evident, however, that throughout

this scene the actor was laboring under constraint; he had yet to

establish himself with his audience, and was afraid of committing

himself prematurely. Henceforth he may dismiss this apprehension; for

he has proved that he is, beyond all question, the first tragedian of

the age.... We have spoken of this gentleman's Othello in high terms

of praise, but have not commended it beyond its deserts. In manly and

unaffected vigor; in terrific force of passion, where such a display

is requisite; but, above all, in heartfelt tenderness, it is fully

equal to Kean's Othello; in sustained dignity, and in the absence

of all stage-trick and undue gesticulation, it is superior. Perhaps

here and there it was a little too elaborate; but this is a trivial

blemish, which practice will soon remedy. On the whole, Mr. Forrest

is the most promising tragedian that has appeared in our days. He

has, evidently, rare intellectual endowments; a noble and commanding

presence; a countenance full of varying expression; a voice mellow,

flexible, and in its undertones exquisitely tender, and a discretion

that never fails him. If any one can revive the half-extinct taste for

the drama, he is the man."

The Carlton Chronicle said,--

"It is impossible that any actor could, in person, bearing, action,

and utterance, better fulfil your fair-ideal of the noble Moor. All

the passages of the part evincing Will and Power are delivered after

a manner to leave the satisfied listener no faculty except that of

admiration. His bursts of passion are terrifically grand. There is

no grimace,--no exaggeration. They are terrible in their downright

earnestness and apparent truth. Nothing could be more heart-thrilling

than the noble rage with which he delivered the well-known passage,--

'I had rather be a toad,

And live upon the vapor of a dungeon,

Than keep a corner in the thing I love,

For others' uses;'

nothing more glorious than the burst in which he volleyed forth the

following passage, suppressed by the barbarians of our theatres,--

'Like to the Pontic Sea,

Whose icy current and compulsive course

Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on

To the Propontic and the Hellespont;

Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,

Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,

Till that a capable and wide revenge

Swallow them up.'

Throughout the part, as he enacted it, there were several new

readings, in the player's phrase. They were all good,--they all

conveyed to us, who love Shakspeare, new ideas. Forrest, apart from

his playing, is no common man. In many scenes of the play, in which

it was the fashion to rant, Forrest contented himself with the

appropriate display of dignified and quiet power. This was beyond

praise."

The following extract is from the notice in the John Bull:

"It is where Iago first attempts to rouse the jealousy of Othello,

and, having created the spark, succeeds in fanning it to a consuming

fire, that Mr. Forrest may be said to have been truly great. Slowly he

appeared to indulge the suspicion of his wife's infidelity; in silent

agony the conviction seemed to be creeping upon him,--his iron sinews

trembling with dreadful and conflicting emotions,--rapid as thought

were his denunciations; and, with all the weakness of woman, he again

relapsed into tenderness,--pain had a respite, and hope a prospect.

Then came his fearful and startling challenge to Iago, ending,--

'If thou dost slander her, and torture me,

Never pray more: abandon all remorse;

On horror's head horrors accumulate:

Do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth amazed;

For nothing canst thou to damnation add

Greater than that.'

"The almost savage energy with which this passage was delivered

produced an indescribable effect. Three long and distinct rounds of

applause testified how highly the audience was delighted with this

master-effort; and the most prejudiced must have been convinced that

they were witnessing the acting of no ordinary man."

The critique in the Albion was a notable one:

"Mr. Forrest made his first appearance on our boards on Monday

last, in the part of Othello. Mr. Forrest possesses a fine person,

an excellent thing in either man or woman; but, though this has

been much dwelt upon by the London critics, it is but a very minor

affair when speaking of such a man as Mr. Forrest. He carries

himself with exceeding grace and dignity, and his tread is easy

and majestic: he dresses with taste and magnificence. The picture

which he presented of the Moor was one of the most perfect which

we have witnessed. He gave us to see, like Desdemona, 'Othello's

visage in his mind,' of which he furnished us with a beautiful

and highly-finished portrait. Not content with acting each scene

well, he gave us a consistent transcript of the whole matter. Each

succeeding scene was in strict keeping with those that had preceded

it, showing that the actor had grasped the whole plot from beginning

to end, and that, from commencement to catastrophe, he had embodied

himself into strict identity with the person represented. His early

scenes were distinguished by a quiet and calm dignity of demeanor,

which, concomitant with the deepest tenderness of feeling, and a

high tone of manliness, he seems to have conceived the basis of

the Moor's character. In his address to the Senate, this dignified

self-possession, and a sense of what was due to himself, he made

particularly conspicuous. As the interest of the tragedy advanced,

we saw, with exceeding pleasure, that Mr. Forrest was determined to

depend for success upon the precept set forth by Shakspeare, 'To hold

the mirror up to nature.' With proper confidence in his own powers, he

disdained to overstep the prescribed bound for the sake of producing

effects equally at variance with nature and heterodox to good taste.

In the scene where he quells the drunken brawl, his acting throughout

was strikingly impressive of reality. Some of his ideas were novel,

and beautifully accordant with the tone of the character which he

wished to develop. Such was his recitation of the passage,--

'Silence that dreadful bell! it frights the isle

From her propriety.'

From the general group he turned to a single attendant who stood at

his elbow, and delivered the command in a subdued tone, as though

it were not intended for the ear of the multitude. This, though

effective, was judicious, and not overstrained. His dismissal of

Cassio was equally illustrative of the spirit to which we have

alluded. The audience testified their approbation by a loud burst

of applause. The final scene with Iago was beautifully played: the

gradual workings of his mind from calmness to jealousy were displayed

with striking effect. The transitions of emotion in the following

splendid passage were finely marked:

'If I do prove her haggard,

Though that her jesses were my dear heartstrings,

I'd whistle her off, and let her down the wind,

To prey at fortune. Haply, for I am black,

And have not those soft parts of conversation

That chamberers have: Or, for I am declined

Into the vale of years; yet that's not much:

She's gone: I am abused: and my relief

Must be to loathe her. O the curse of marriage,

That we can call these delicate creatures ours,

And not their appetites! I'd rather be a toad,

And live upon the vapor of a dungeon,

Than keep a corner in the thing I love,

For other's uses.

Desdemona comes!'

The burst of mixed passions with which he uttered the first of these

sentences was terrific. His voice then sank into tones the most

touching, expressive of complaining regret. The conclusion seemed to

have excited him to the most extreme pitch of loathing and disgust,

and, as he sees Desdemona advancing, he, for a few moments, gazed upon

her with horror. The feeling gave way, and all his former tenderness

seemed to return as he exclaimed,--

'If she be false, O then Heaven mocks itself,--

I'll not believe it.'

The subsequent scene with Iago, a trial of physical as well as mental

strength, was well sustained. It is here that Iago, by a series of

artful manoeuvres, screws the Moor up to the sticking-place. To

the conclusion of the scene the vehement passions are continually

increasing, and the difficulty is for an actor so to manage his powers

as to give full effect to the whole, without sinking into apparent

tameness in the last imprecation. We will not attempt any description

of the bedchamber scene. The reiterated and protracted plaudits of the

audience showed how highly it was appreciated. The dying-scene was

equally novel and excellent. At the fall of the curtain the audience

testified their delight and approbation by the most marked and

vehement applause, which continued for several minutes."

The London Journal gave a long account of Forrest's Lear, of which this

extract contains the substance:

"We have been much amused by the conflict of opinion respecting this

representation. Some describe it as one of the most magnificent

triumphs of this or any age. Another denounces the performance as an

idle and false imposition, and the actor as an ignorant empiric, who

has crossed the Atlantic solely to practise on the gullibility of John

Bull. We do not think John quite so gullible; we do not believe that

in matters of intellectual recreation he is so apt to take

'Those tenders for true pay

Which are not sterling.'

We consider it may be pretty safely taken as a general rule that the

large popularity of any artist is here synonymous only with great

talent. We had also seen quite enough of Mr. Forrest to convince

us that he is a man of real talent, with very little, if any, mere

trickery in his acting, so that to stigmatize him as a quack or an

impostor was as great a violation of truth as of good feeling. At

the same time, it is right we should remark that the estimate we

had formed of his genius, from his previous representations, was

not sufficiently high to induce a belief in all that his eulogists

pronounced on his Lear. We, therefore, came to the conclusion that

in this case, as in others where opinions are so remote from each

other, the truth would, probably, be found midway between the two

extremes; and, on seeing and judging for ourselves on Monday night,

found our conclusion fully warranted. The general conception of the

'poor old king' is most accurately taken, and his general execution

of it fervid, earnest, and harmonious. He has evidently grappled

with the character manfully, and he never lets go his hold. The

carefulness of his study is sometimes a little too obvious, giving

an injurious hardness and over-precision. The awful malediction of

Goneril--that fearful curse, which can scarcely be even read without

trembling--was delivered by Mr. Forrest with a power and intensity

we never saw surpassed by any actor of Lear. It was an exhibition

likely to follow a young play-goer to his pillow and mix itself with

his dreams. Shakspeare has here given us a wild burst of uncontrolled

and uncontrollable rage, mixed with a deep pathos, which connects

the very terms of the curse with the cause of the passion,--an awful

prayer for a retribution as just as terrible. All this Mr. Forrest

evidently understood and felt; and he therefore made his audience feel

it with him. The almost supernatural energy with which Lear seems to

be carried on to the very termination of the malediction, when the

passion exhausts itself and him, was portrayed by Mr. Forrest with

fearful reality and effect. He also greatly excelled in the passage,--

'No, you unnatural hags,

I will have such revenges on you both,

That all the world shall--I will do such things,--

What they are yet, I know not; but they shall be

The terrors of the earth.'

His delivery of these lines was marked with the same truth and power

as the curse, and very finely displayed the energy of will and

impotence of action which form so touching a combination in Lear's

character. But perhaps the very best point in Mr. Forrest's Lear,

because the most delicate and difficult passage for an actor to

realize, was his manner of giving the lines,--

'My wits begin to turn.--

Come on, my boy: how dost, my boy? Art cold?

I am cold myself....

Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart

That's sorry yet for thee.'

This beautiful passage is extremely touching, and Mr. Forrest fully

felt and adequately illustrated its pathos and its beauty."

Another of the authorities in British journalism, whose title the

writer cannot recover, wrote thus:

"If Mr. Forrest is great in Othello, we do not hesitate to say he is

much greater in Lear. Here the verisimilitude is perfect. From the

moment of his entrance to the finely-portrayed death, every passion

which rages in that brain--the love, the madness, the ambition, the

despair--is given the more forcibly that it flashes through the

feebleness of age. In that powerful scene where the bereaved monarch

laments over his dead daughter, Mr. Forrest acted pre-eminently well.

He bears in her lifeless body and makes such a moan over it as would

force tears from a Stoic. None, we think, who heard him put the

plaintive but powerful interrogatory,--

'Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,

And thou no breath at all?'--

followed by the bitter and melancholy reflection,--

'O! thou wilt come no more,

Never! never! never! never! never!'

will ever forget the anguish depicted on Mr. Forrest's features, or

the heart-piercing melancholy of his tones. Mr. Forrest evinced,

throughout, a fine conception of the character. He did not surprise us

by a burst of genius now and then. His performance was equable,--it

was distinguished in every part by deep and intense feeling. The curse

levelled against Goneril (one of the most fearful passages ever penned

by man) was given with awful force. The last member of the speech--

'That she may feel

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is

To have a thankless child!'--

was poured forth with an unrestrained but natural energy that acted

like an electric shock on the audience; a momentary silence succeeded

it; but immediately afterwards a simultaneous burst of applause

attested the great triumph of the actor. His mad-scenes, when,

delighting in a crown and sceptre of straw, Lear proclaims himself

'every inch a king,' were admirably conceived, and no less admirably

acted. There was no straining after effect,--there was no grimacery.

We saw before us the 'poor, weak, and despised old man,'--the 'more

sinned against than sinning,'--reduced to a state of second childhood,

and paying the too severe penalty which his folly and his credulity,

in listening to the hyperboles of his elder daughters and rejecting

the true filial affection of his youngest and once his most beloved

child, exacted from him."

It may be well, also, to quote what was said by the "London Times" of

November 5th:

"The part of Lear is one which many otherwise eminent actors have

found above, or at least unsuited to, their capacities. Mr. Forrest

played it decidedly better than anything he has as yet essayed in

this country. His conception of the character is accurate, and his

execution was uncommonly powerful and effective. If it be, as it

cannot be disputed that it is, a test of an actor's skill that he

is able to rivet the attention of the audience, and so to engage

their thoughts and sympathies that they have not leisure even to

applaud on the instant, he may be said to have succeeded most

completely last night. From the beginning of the play to the end,

it was obvious that he exercised this power over the spectators.

While he was speaking, the most profound silence prevailed, and it

was not until he had concluded that the delight of the audience

vented itself in loud applause. This was particularly remarkable

in his delivery of Lear's curse upon his daughters, the effect of

which was more powerful than anything that has lately been done on

the stage. It is not, however, upon particular passages that the

excellence of the performance depended; its great merit was that it

was a whole, complete and finished. The spirit in which it began was

equally sustained throughout, and, as a delineation of character and

passion, it was natural, true, and vigorous, in a very remarkable

degree. The mad-scenes were admirably played; and the last painful

scene, so painful that it might well be dispensed with, was given

with considerable power. The great accuracy and fidelity with which

the decrepitude of the aged monarch was portrayed was not among the

least meritorious parts of the performance. The palsied head and

quivering limbs were so correctly given as to prove that the actor's

attention has been sedulously devoted to the attempt to make the

performance as perfect as possible. A striking proof of his sense of

the propriety of keeping up the illusion he had created was manifested

in his reappearance, in obedience to the loud and general call of

the audience, at the end of the tragedy. He came on, preserving the

same tottering gait which he had maintained throughout, and bowed his

thanks as much in the guise of Lear as he had acted in the drama. This

would have been almost ridiculous in any but a very skilful actor:

in him it served to prevent too sudden a dissipation of the dramatic

illusion."

The critical notices of the Macbeth of Forrest were of the same average

as the foregoing estimates of his other parts, though the faults

pointed out were generally of a description the exact opposite of those

currently ascribed to his acting. He was considered too subdued and

tame in the part:

"Mr. Forrest essayed the difficult character of Macbeth, for the

first time in this country, on Wednesday evening. We are inclined

to think that this highly-gifted actor has not often attempted this

part; because, though his performance displayed many noble traits of

genius, yet it could not, as a whole, boast of that equally-sustained

excellence by which his personation of Lear and of Othello was

distinguished. We were highly gratified by his exertions in that

part of the second act which commences with the 'dagger soliloquy,'

and ends with Macbeth's exit, overwhelmed with fear, horror, and

remorse. There is no man on the stage at present who could, in this

scene, produce so terrific an effect. Never did we see the bitterness

of remorse, the pangs of guilt-condemning conscience, so powerfully

portrayed. The storm of feeling by which the soul of Macbeth is

assailed, spoke in the agitated limbs of Mr. Forrest, and in the wild,

unearthly glare of his eye, ere he had uttered a word. On his entrance

after his bloody mission to Duncan's chamber, Mr. Forrest introduced

a new and a very striking point. Absorbed in the recollection of the

crime which he has committed, he does not perceive Lady Macbeth till

she seizes his arm. Then, acting under the impulse of a mind fraught

with horror, he starts back, uttering an exclamation of fear, as if

his way had been barred by some supernatural power. This fine touch,

so true to the scene and to nature, drew down several rounds of

applause. In the banquet scene, too, his acting was very fine; and the

greater part of the fifth act was supported with extraordinary energy.

That passage in which, having heard that 'a wood does come toward

Dunsinane,' Macbeth exclaims to the messenger,--

'If thou speak'st false,

Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,

Till famine cling thee:--if thy speech be sooth,

I care not if thou dost for me as much,'--

was delivered with astonishing force. Mr. Forrest gave those

melancholy reminiscences which occasionally float over the saddened

mind of Macbeth with intense and searching feeling. There was,

however, in many parts of his performance a lack of power. Mr. Forrest

was too subdued,--too colloquial. The speech of Macbeth, after the

discovery of the murder,--

'Had I but died an hour before this chance,

I had lived a blessed time,'--

was delivered with most inappropriate calmness. Macbeth would have

here 'assumed a virtue though he had it not,' and poured forth his

complainings in a louder tone. Again, Macbeth's answer to Macduff, who

demands why he has slain the sleepy grooms,--

'Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,

Loyal and neutral, in a moment?--No man!'--

was wholly deficient in spirit, until Mr. Forrest came to the last

member of the sentence, which was given with due and proper emphasis.

In the rencounter with Macduff, where Macbeth declares that he 'bears

a charmed life,' the passage ought to be uttered as the proud boast

of one who was confident of supernatural protection, and not in a

taunting, sneering manner. Mr. Forrest's error is on the right side,

and is very easily corrected. Doubtless, in his future performance of

the character he will assume a higher tone in those parts of the play

to which we have alluded."

The Morning Chronicle said,--

"Mr. Forrest appeared last evening in the character of Macbeth, and in

the performance of it fully sustained the reputation he has already

obtained in the parts of Othello and Lear. Mr. Forrest brings to the

performance of Shakspeare's heroes an energy and vigor, tempered

with a taste and judgment, such as we rarely find combined in any

who venture to tread the stage. There is, besides, a reality in his

acting, an actual identification of himself with the character he

impersonates, stronger than in any actor we have ever seen. If this

was remarkable in his performance of Othello and Lear, it is not less

so in the performance of Macbeth. From the first act to the last--from

his first interview with the weird sisters, whose vague prophecy

instills into the mind that feeling of 'vaulting ambition' which

leads him to the commission of so many crimes, to the last scene, in

which he finds his charms dissolved, and begins, too late, to doubt

'the equivocation of the fiend'--he carried the audience completely

with him, and made them at times wholly unmindful of the skill of the

actor, from the interest excited in the actions of Macbeth."

In addition to his renderings of Spartacus, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth,

Forrest appeared also as Damon, and achieved a success similar to that

he had won in the same part at home.

"The part of _Damon_ is decidedly beneath Mr. Forrest's acknowledged

talents. No man could, however, have made more of the character than

he did, whether he appeared as the stern, uncompromising patriot, the

deep-feeling husband and father, or the generous and devoted friend.

His rebuke of the slavish senate, who crouch at the feet of the tyrant

Dionysius, was delivered with calm and earnest dignity; but his two

great scenes were that in which he learns that his freedman, Lucullus,

has slain his horse to prevent the anxious Damon from arriving in time

to rescue his beloved Pythias from the hands of the executioner; and

that with which the piece concludes, where, breathless and exhausted,

he rushes into the presence of his despairing friend.

"The burst of passionate fury with which he assailed the affrighted

freedman, in the former scene, was awfully fearful; and his expression

of wild, frantic, overwhelming joy when he beholds Pythias in safety,

and can only manifest his feelings by hysteric laughter, was perfectly

true to nature. Mr. Forrest's performance was most amply and justly

applauded."

The actor had every reason to feel well pleased with the results of his

bold undertaking. His emotions are expressed in a letter written to

his mother under date of Liverpool, January 2d, 1837, in the course of

which he says,--

"Before this you have doubtless heard of my great triumphs in Drury

Lane Theatre; though I must confess I did not think they treated

the Gladiator and my friend Dr. Bird fairly. Yet, as far as regards

myself, I never have been more successful, even in my own dear land.

In the characters of Shakspeare alone would they hear me; and night

after night in overwhelming crowds they came, and showered their

hearty applause on my efforts. This, my dear mother, is a triumphant

refutation of those prejudiced opinions so often repeated of me in

America by a few ignorant scribblers, who but for the actors would

never have understood one line of the immortal bard."

But a fuller statement of his impressions in London, with interesting

glimpses of his social life there, is contained in a letter to Leggett:

"... My success in England has been very great. While the people

evinced no great admiration of the Gladiator, they came in crowds to

witness my personation of Othello, Lear, and Macbeth. I commenced my

engagement on the 17th of October at 'Old Drury,' and terminated it

on the 19th of December, having acted in all thirty-two nights, and

represented those three characters of Shakspeare twenty-four out of

the thirty-two, namely, Othello nine times, Macbeth seven, and King

Lear eight,--this last having been repeated oftener by me than by any

other actor on the London boards in the same space of time, except

Kean alone. This approbation of my Shakspeare parts gives me peculiar

pleasure, as it refutes the opinions very confidently expressed by a

certain _clique_ at home that I would fail in those characters before

a London audience.

"But it is not only from my reception within the walls of the theatre

that I have reason to be pleased with my English friends. I have

received many grateful kindnesses in their hospitable homes, and in

their intellectual fireside circles have drunk both instruction and

delight. I suppose you saw in the newspapers that a dinner was given

to me by the Garrick Club. Serjeant Talfourd presided, and made a very

happy and complimentary speech, to which I replied. Charles Kemble

and Mr. Macready were there. The latter gentleman has behaved in the

handsomest manner to me. Before I arrived in England, he had spoken

of me in the most flattering terms, and on my arrival he embraced the

earliest opportunity to call upon me, since which time he has extended

to me many delicate courtesies and attentions, all showing the native

kindness of his heart, and great refinement and good breeding. The

dinner at the Garrick was attended by many of the most distinguished

men.

"I feel under great obligations to Mr. Stephen Price, who has shown

me not only the hospitalities which he knows so well how to perform,

but many other attentions which have been of great service to me, and

which, from his long experience in theatrical matters, he was more

competent to render than any other person. He has done me the honor to

present me with a copy of Shakspeare and a Richard's sword, which were

the property of Kean. Would that he could bestow upon me his _mantle_

instead of his weapon! Mr. Charles Kemble, too, has tendered me, in

the kindest manner, two swords, one of which belonged to his truly

eminent brother, and the other to the great Talma, the theatrical idol

of the _grande nation_.

"The London press, as you probably have noticed, has been divided

concerning my professional merits; though as a good republican I ought

to be satisfied, seeing I had an overwhelming majority on my side.

There is a degree of dignity and critical precision and force in their

articles generally (I speak of those against me, as well as for me,

and others, also, of which my acting was not the subject) that place

them far above the newspaper criticisms of stage performances which we

meet with in our country. Their comments always show one thing,--that

they have read and appreciated the writings of their chief dramatists;

while with us there are many who would hardly know, were it not

for the actors, that Shakspeare had ever existed. The audiences,

too, have a quick and keen perception of the beauties of the drama.

They seem, from the timeliness and proportion of their applause, to

possess a previous knowledge of the text. They applaud warmly, but

seasonably. They do not interrupt a passion and oblige the actor to

sustain it beyond the propriety of nature; but if he delineates it

forcibly and truly, they reward him in the intervals of the dialogue.

Variations from the accustomed modes, though not in any palpable new

readings,--which, for the most part, are bad readings, for there is

generally but one mode positively correct, and that has not been left

for us to discover,--but slight changes in emphasis, tone, or action,

delicate shadings and pencillings, are observed with singular and

most gratifying quickness. You find that your study of Shakspeare has

not been thrown away; that your attempt to grasp the character in its

'gross and scope,' as well as in its details, so as not merely to know

how to speak what is written, but to preserve its truth and keeping in

a new succession of incidents, could it be exposed to them,--you find

that this is seen and appreciated by the audience; and the evidence

that they see and feel is given with an emphasis and heartiness that

make the theatre shake.

"Though my success in London, and now here, has been great beyond my

fondest expectations; though the intoxicating cup of popular applause

is pressed nightly, overflowing, to my lips; and though in private I

receive all sorts of grateful kindnesses and courtesies,--yet--yet--to

tell the truth--there are moments when a feeling of homesickness comes

upon me, and I would give up all this harvest of profit and fame which

I am gathering, to be once more in my 'ain hame' and under 'the bright

skies of my own free land.'"

The above estimate of British dramatic criticism is a little

rose-colored, from the imperfect experience of the writer at the time.

It was not long before he knew more of it in its less attractive

aspect. For he found that the same unhappy influences of personal

prejudice and spite, of ignorance and spleen, of cabal interest and

corruption, which betrayed themselves in the American press, were

conspicuously shown also in the English. Only a few months before

the arrival of Forrest, a company of French players from Paris had

attempted to perform in London, and had been subjected to treatment,

through the instigation of the rival theatres, which had caused their

failure and deeply disgraced and mortified the public. The intense

self-interest and notorious jealousy of prominent players, as a class,

produced in London, as elsewhere, cliques who set up as champions each

of its favorite performer, and strove to advance him, not only by

rightful means, but likewise by the illegitimate method of putting his

competitors down. The chosen literary tool of a great tragedian, the

newspaper critic who arrogates to represent his interests, very often

volunteers services with which his principal has nothing to do. It was

so in London while Forrest played in Drury Lane. Macready, Vandenhoff,

Charles Kemble, Charles Kean, and Booth all had rival engagements.

Three different newspapers were the respective organs of three of these

actors. All three agreed in depreciating and abusing the stranger,

while each one at the same time spoke with detraction and sneers of the

favorites of the other two. While the general press spoke fairly of

each performer, and gave Forrest such notices as more than satisfied

him and his friends, these special papers indulged in fulsome eulogy

of their chosen idol and assailed the others with satire and insult.

For example, one writer says of Kean, "He stars in country theatres,

where his power of exaggerating the faults of his father's acting gives

delight to the unwashed of the gallery, who like handsome dresses,

noise, stamping, bustle, and splutter." A second says of Booth, "Bunn,

in his drowning desperation, catches at straws. He has put forward

Booth, the shadow and foil of Kean in bygone days. His Richard seems

to have been a wretched failure." A third says of Macready in Othello,

in the scene with Iago and Brabantio, "He comes on the stage with

the air of a sentimental negro rehearsing the part of Hamlet." And a

fourth characterizes the voice of Macready "as a combination of grunt,

guttural, and spasm." After such specimens of "criticism" on their own

countrymen, one need not feel surprised to read notices of a foreigner,

inspired by the same spirit, like the following from the "Examiner":

"Mr. Forrest has appeared in Mr. Howard Payne's foolish compilation

called Brutus. This is an American tragedy, and not ill-suited, on the

whole, to Mr. Forrest's style. The result was amazingly disagreeable."

The animus of such writing is so obvious to every person of insight

that it falls short of its mark, and does no injury to the artist

ridiculed. The writer shows himself, as one of his contemporaries said,

not a critic, but a caviller,--a gad-fly of the drama.

Among the squibs that flew on all sides among the partisans, abounding

in phrases like "the icy stilts and bombastic pomposity of Vandenhoff,"

"the stiff and disagreeable mannerism of Macready," "the affected,

half-convulsive croaking of Charles Kean," "the awkward ignorance and

brutality of Forrest," the American actor was treated, on the whole, as

well as the English ones. A gentleman who had a private box in Drury

Lane lent it to a friend to see Forrest in Othello. But it was one of

his off-nights, in which Booth was substituted as Richard. The next

morning these lines appeared in a public print, as full of injustice as

such things usually are:

"Of Shakspeare in _barns_ we have heard;

Yet who has the patience, forsooth,

To witness King Richard the Third,

Enacted to-night in a--BOOTH?

The order to you I have brought,

Not liking the Manager's trick;

For instead of the FORREST I sought,

He now only offers a _stick_."

The impression he made, however, his great and unquestionable success,

are best shown by certain salient facts with which the dramatic

critics, prejudiced or unprejudiced, had nothing to do: the brilliant

public banquet given in his honor by the Garrick Club, with Thomas Noon

Talfourd in the chair; the exhibition, at the Somerset House, of his

full-length portrait as Macbeth in the dagger-scene; and the numerous

valuable presents made to him by various eminent men, including a

superb original oil-portrait of Garrick;--these tell their own story.

At the close of his first engagement a testimonial was given him by

his fellow-actors, every one of them spontaneously joining in the

contribution. It was, as the "Morning Herald" described it, "a splendid

snuff-box of tortoise-shell, lined and mounted with gold, with a mosaic

lid, and the inscription,--

"To Edwin Forrest, Esq., the American tragedian, from the performers

of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in testimony of their admiration of

his talent as an actor, and their respect for him as a man. 'His worth

is warrant for his welcome hither.'--SHAKSPEARE."

The prolonged stay of Forrest in England was ostensibly to continue

for another season the brilliant professional life there opened to

him. But, in reality, a tenderer attraction constituted his principal

motive. He had met in the fashionable circles of the art life of London

a young lady of extreme beauty and of accomplished manners, thoroughly

imbued with musical and dramatic tastes, who had quite won his heart.

This was Catherine Norton Sinclair, daughter of a very distinguished

English vocalist. Miss Sinclair, with much force of character and

grace and vivacity of demeanor, had a personal loveliness which gave

her distinction wherever she appeared, and an ingenuous sympathetic

expression which made her a general favorite. She was the first and

only woman whom Forrest, with all his earnest but not absorbing

amours, had ever seriously thought of marrying. Her image, fixed in

his bewitched imagination wherever he went, made him impatient to be

with her again in fact. This was the magnet that drew him, after every

departure, so quickly back to London. The maiden, on the other hand,

was as much enamored as the man. More than thirty-six years afterwards,

when he was lying cold in his coffin, and so much of joy and hope and

pain and tragic grief lay buried between their separated souls, she

said, "The first time I saw him--I recall it now as clearly as though

it were but yesterday--the impression he made was so instantaneous

and so strong, that I remember I whispered to myself, while a thrill

ran through me, 'This is the handsomest man on whom my eyes have ever

fallen.'" On meeting they were mutually smitten, and the passion grew,

and no obstacles intervened, and they were betrothed. The intervals

between his starring engagements in the chief cities of the United

Kingdom he spent in courtship. It was a period of divine intoxication,

which they alone who have had a kindred experience can understand, when

life was all a current of bliss in a world sparkling with enchantment.

A favorite poet has said,--

"Oh, time is sweet when roses meet,

With June's soft breath around them;

And sweet the cost when hearts are lost,

If those we love have found them;"

and it was in 1837, on one of the fairest days of an English June,--a

day which, no doubt, they fondly supposed would stand thenceforth as

the most golden in all the calendar of their lives,--that the happy

pair were married, in the grand old cathedral of Saint Paul, in London.

The officiating clergyman was the Rev. Henry Hart Milman, a man equally

renowned as preacher, scholar, historian, and poet. The service was

performed in an imposing manner, before a brilliant assemblage, with

every propitious omen and the loving wishes of the multitude of friends

whose sympathies were there from both sides of the sea. Then followed

the long, delicious honeymoon, in which newly-wed lovers withdraw from

the world to be all the world to each other. Every benediction hovered

over them,--love, youth, health, beauty, fortune, the blessing of

parents, the pride of friends, the gilded vision of popularity. Nor

was the entrancement of their dream broken when they found themselves,

in the autumn, at home in the Republic of the West, welcomed with

outstretched hands by the friendly throng, who, as they came in sight,

stood shouting on the shore.

CHAPTER XII.

MERIDIAN OF SUCCESS AND REPUTATION.--NEW RÔLES OF FEBRO, MELNOTTE, AND

JACK CADE.

The interest of his friends and of the public at large in the returning

actor was increased by the laurels he had won in the mother-country,

and the prize hanging on his arm, whose beauty lent a choicer domestic

lustre to his professional glory. Wherever he played, the theatre

was crowded to overflowing, and the receipts and the applause were

unprecedented. The only alloy in his cup--and this was not then so

copious or so bitter as it afterwards became--was the acrimonious and

envenomed criticism springing alike from the envious and malignant, who

cannot see any one successful without assailing him, and from those

whose tastes were displeased or whose prejudices were offended by his

peculiarities.

While fulfilling an engagement in Boston, he received a very

characteristic letter from Leggett, which may serve as a specimen of

their correspondence. It will be seen that the tragedian had urged on

the editor the writing of a play for him on the theme of Jack Cade and

his rebellion. He afterwards induced Conrad to reconstruct his play of

Aylmere, which in its original form was not suited to his ideas.

"NEW YORK, Wednesday evening, Oct. 25th.

"MY DEAR FORREST,--I was in hopes of having a line from you before

this time, telling the Boston news, or so much of it at least as

concerns you and yours, which is what I care to hear. But you are

determined, I suppose, to maintain the character you have so well

earned, of being a most dilatory correspondent. I have had the

pleasure of hearing this evening, however, through another channel,

that you are drawing full houses; and I trust that all is going on

well in other respects. Placide and I took a walk out to Bloomingdale

last Sunday afternoon, and as we were returning we conjectured that

you and Catherine were just sitting down at the board of Mr. and Mrs.

Manager Barry.

"I have been down town this evening for the first time these several

days. I extended my walk to the Park Theatre, where Miss Tree was

performing _Rosalind_. The house was about $500; that at the National,

Vandenhoff, could not have exceeded $300. Miss Tree's engagement will

conclude with her benefit on Friday evening, when she will probably

have between $900 and $1000, making her average for the eleven nights

about $650. This is considered a very handsome business. Mad. Caridora

Allen opens on Monday evening, and her box sheet already shows a fine

display of fashionable names. She will have a full and _fine_ house.

She has been giving a touch of her quality at some of the soirées

of the exclusives, and is pronounced just the thing. The Woodworth

benefit limps tediously along. The returning of your money makes a

good deal of talk, and the conduct of the committee is much censured.

The motive, to injure you, and foist up Vandenhoff at your expense,

will meet with a sad discomfiture. My good public is too clear-sighted

to be humbugged in so plain a matter.

"I hope you continue to make yourself acquainted with that insolent

patrician _Coriolanus_. He was not quite so much of a democrat as you

and I are; but that is no reason why we should not use him if he can

do us a service. I wish Shakspeare, with all his divine attributes,

had only had a little of that ennobling love of equal human liberty

which is now animating the hearts of true patriots all over the world,

and is destined, ere long, to effect a great and glorious change in

the condition of mankind. What a vast and godlike influence he might

have exerted in moulding the public mind and guiding the upward

progress of nations, if his great genius had not been dazzled by the

false glitter of aristocratic institutions, and blinded to the equal

rights of the great family of man! Had I a little of his transcendent

intellect, I would assert the principles of democratic freedom in a

voice that should 'fill the world with echoes.'

"My own affairs remain in _statu quo_. I am still undetermined what

to do. I have been solicited to write for the democratic 'Monthly

Review,' just established in Washington, and there is some talk among

the politicians here of getting up a morning paper, and offering me

the place of principal editor. I have been turning over the Jack Cade

subject; but I confess I am almost afraid to undertake it. The theme

is a grand one, and I warm when I think of it; but I must not mistake

the ardor of my feelings in the sacred cause of human liberty for

ability to manage the mighty subject. Besides, the prejudices and

prepossessions of the world are against me, with Shakspeare on their

side. Who must not feel his feebleness and insignificance when called

to enter the list against such an antagonist? I must do something,

however, and shortly; for I can now say, with _Jaffier_, though unlike

him I am not devout enough to thank Heaven for it, that I am not worth

a ducat.

"I took a walk out to New Rochelle on Monday afternoon, and returned

yesterday morning. I need not say that you were the theme of much

of the conversation while I was there. Many questions were asked me

concerning your 'handsome English wife.'

"I shall long very earnestly for the 18th of December to arrive, when

I count upon enjoying another month of happiness. 'How happily the

days of Thalaba went by' during the five weeks of your late sojourn in

this city! I shall not speedily forget those pleasant evenings.

"It is past midnight now, and Elmira has been long in bed; otherwise I

should be enjoined to add her love to mine.

"Good-night, and God bless you both.

"Yours ever,

"WM. LEGGETT."

Not long after his return from England, some of the most distinguished

of his fellow-citizens joined in giving him the compliment of a public

dinner. The festival was of a sumptuous and magnificent character,

and drawing together, as it did, nearly all the marked talent and

celebrity of Philadelphia, the honor was felt to be one of no ordinary

value. Nicholas Biddle was president, supported by six vice-presidents

and eleven managers. The banquet was held on the 15th of December,

1837. Over two hundred gentlemen sat down at the table. Mr. Biddle

being kept away by a severe illness, the chair was occupied by Hon.

J. R. Ingersoll; Mr. Forrest was on his right, and in the immediate

vicinity were Chief-Justice Gibson, Judge Rogers, Recorder Conrad,

Colonel Swift, Mayor of the city, Dr. Jackson, of the University of

Pennsylvania, Prof. Mitchell, Dr. Calhoun, Dean of Jefferson College,

Morton McMichael, Robert Morris, R. Penn Smith, and Messrs. Dunlap,

Banks, Bell, and Doran, members of the Convention then sitting to

revise the Constitution of the State. Leggett was present from New

York, by special invitation.

The room was elegantly ornamented. The name of the chief guest was

woven in wreaths around the pyramids of confectionery, branded on the

bottles of wine, and embossed about various articles of the dessert. No

pains were spared to add to the entertainment every charm of grace and

taste adapted to gratify its recipient. One of the city papers said,

the next morning,--

"On no former occasion in Philadelphia has there been so numerous and

brilliant an assemblage for any similar purpose. The selectness of

the company, the zeal and enthusiasm they exhibited, and the cordial

greetings they bestowed, must have been especially gratifying to the

feelings of Mr. Forrest, springing as these testimonials did from a

proud recognition of his worth as a townsman."

The following letter explained the absence of the chosen president of

the day:

"PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 15th, 1837.

"_Hon. R. T. Conrad,_

"MY DEAR SIR,--I regret much that indisposition will prevent me

from joining your festival to-day. Feeling, as I do, an intense

nationality, which makes the fame of every citizen the common property

of the country, I rejoice at all the developments of intellectual

power among our countrymen in every walk of life, and I am always

anxious to do honor to high faculties combined with personal worth.

Such a union the common voice ascribes to Mr. Forrest, and I would

have gladly added my own applause to the general homage. But this

is impracticable now, and I can therefore only convey through you a

sentiment which, if it wants the vigorous expression of health, has at

least a sick man's sincerity. It is,--

"The genius of our country, whenever and wherever displayed,--honor to

its triumphs in every field of fame.

"With great regard, yours,

"N. BIDDLE."

The cloth having been removed, Mr. Ingersoll rose, and said,--

"The friends of the drama are desirous of paying a merited tribute of

respect and esteem to one of the most distinguished and successful

of its sons. Well-approved usage upon occasions not dissimilar has

pointed to this our cheerful greeting as a fitting method for carrying

their desires into effect. It combines the compliment of public and

unequivocal demonstration with the kindness and cordiality of social

intercourse. It serves to express at once _opinions_ the result of

deliberate judgment, and _sentiments_ warm and faithful from the heart.

"To our guest we owe much for having devoted to the profession which

he has selected an uncommon energy of character and peculiar personal

aptitudes. They are both adapted to the happiest illustrations of

an art which, in the absence of _either_, would want a finished

representative, but, by a rare combination of faculties in _him_, is

enabled effectually 'to hold the mirror up to nature.' It is an art, in

the rational pleasures and substantial advantages derived from which

all are free to participate, and a large proportion of the educated and

liberal-minded avail themselves of the privilege. It is an art which,

for thousands of years, has been practised with success, admired,

and esteemed; and the men who have adorned it by their talents have

received the well-earned plaudits of their age, and the honors of a

cherished name.

"To our guest we owe the acknowledgment (long delayed, indeed) of the

sternest critics of an experienced and enlightened public, not our own,

that of one department at least of elegant literature our country has

produced the brightest living representative.

"To our guest we owe especial thanks that he has been the prompt,

uniform, and liberal patron of his art; that dramatic genius and merit

have never appealed to him for aid in vain; that he has devoted the

best-directed generosity, and some of his most brilliant professional

efforts, to their cause.

"To our guest we owe unmeasured thanks that he has done much by his

personal exertion, study, and example, to identify our stage with the

classic drama, and that he has made the more than modern Æschylus--the

myriad-minded Shakspeare--_ours_.

"We owe him thanks, as members of a well-regulated community, that, by

the course and current of his domestic life, the reproaches that are

sometimes cast upon his profession have been signally disarmed.

"And, in this moment of joyous festivity, we feel that we owe him

unnumbered thanks that he has offered us an opportunity to express for

him an unfeigned and cordial regard.

"These sentiments are embraced in a brief but comprehensive toast,

which I will ask leave to offer,--

"The _Stage_ and its MASTER."

Amid loud and long applause, Forrest rose, bowed his acknowledgments,

and replied,--

"MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,--I feel too deeply the honor this day

rendered me to be able to express myself in terms of adequate meaning.

There are times when the tongue is at best but a poor interpreter of

the heart. The strongest emotions do not always clothe themselves in

the strongest language. The words which rise to my lips seem too cold

and vapid to denote truly the sentiments which prompt them. They lack

that terseness and energy which the occasion deserves.

"The actor usually comes before the public in a 'fiction, in a dream

of passion,' and his aim is to suit his utterance and the ''havior of

the visage' to the unreal situation. But the resources of my art do not

avail me here. This is no pageant of the stage, to be forgotten with

the hour, nor this an audience drawn to view its mimic scenes.

"I stand amidst a numerous throng of the chiefest denizens of my native

city, convened to do me honor; and this costly banquet they present

to me, a munificent token of public regard. I feel, indeed, that I am

no actor here. My bosom throbs with undissembled agitation, and in

the grateful tumult of my thoughts I cannot 'beget a temperance to

give smoothness' to my acknowledgments for so proud a tribute. In the

simplest form of speech, then, let me assure you from my inmost heart,

I thank you.