that shrine shall stand, unshaken by the beating surge of change, and only washed to purer whiteness by the deluge that overwhelms all other political fabrics.

"To the genius of Bacon the world is indebted for emancipating philosophy from the subtleties of the schoolmen, and placing her securely on the firm basis of ascertained elementary truth, thence to soar the loftiest flights on the unfailing pinions of induction and analogy. To the genius of Jefferson—to the comprehensive reach and fervid patriotism of his mind—we owe a more momentous obligation. What Bacon did for natural science, Jefferson did for political morals, that important branch of ethics which most directly affects the happiness of all mankind. He snatched the art of government from the hands that had enveloped it in sophisms and mysteries that it might be made an instrument to oppress the many for the advantage of the few. He stripped it of the jargon by which the human mind had been deluded into blind veneration for kings as the immediate vicegerents of God on earth; and proclaimed in words of eloquent truth, which thrilled conviction to every heart, those eternal self-evident first principles of justice and reason on which alone the fabric of government should be reared. He taught those 'truths of power in words immortal' you have this day heard; words which bear the spirit of great deeds; words which have sounded the death-dirge of tyranny to the remotest corners of the earth; which have roused a sense of right, a hatred of oppression, an intense yearning for democratic liberty, in myriads of myriads of human hearts; and which, reverberating through time like thunder through the sky, will,

"To Jefferson belongs exclusively and forever the high renown of having framed the glorious charter of American liberty. This was the grandest experiment ever undertaken in the history of man. But they that entered upon it were not afraid of new experiments, if founded on the immutable principles of right and approved by the sober convictions of reason. There were not wanting then, indeed, as there are not wanting now, pale counsellors to fear, who would have withheld them from the course they were pursuing, because it tended in a direction hitherto untrod. But they were not to be deterred by the shadowy doubts and timid suggestions of craven spirits, content to be lashed forever round the same circle of miserable expedients, perpetually trying anew the exploded shifts which had always proved lamentably inadequate before. To such men the very name of experiment is a sound of horror. It is a spell which conjures up gorgons, hydras, and chimeras dire. They seem not to know that all that is valuable in life—that the acquisitions of learning, the discoveries of science, and the refinements of art—are the result of experiment. It was experiment that bestowed on Cadmus those keys of knowledge with which we unlock the treasure-houses of immortal mind. It was experiment that taught Bacon the futility of the Grecian philosophy, and led him to that heaven-scaling method of investigation and analysis on which science has safely climbed to the proud eminence where now she sits, dispensing her blessings on mankind. It was experiment that lifted Newton above the clouds and darkness of this visible diurnal sphere, enabling him to explore the sublime mechanism of the stars and weigh the planets in their eternal rounds. It was experiment that nerved the hand of Franklin to snatch the thunder from the armory of heaven. It was experiment that gave this hemisphere to the world. It was experiment that gave this continent to freedom.

"Let us not be afraid, then, to try experiments merely because they are new, nor lavish upon aged error the veneration due only to truth. Let us not be afraid to follow reason, however far she may diverge from the beaten path of opinion. All the inventions which embellish life, all the discoveries which enlarge the field of human happiness, are but various results of the bold experimental exercise of that distinguishing attribute of man. It was the exercise of reason that taught our sires those simple elements of freedom on which they founded their stupendous structure of empire. The result is now before mankind, not in the embryo form of doubtful experiment; not as the mere theory of visionary statesmen, or the mad project of hot-brained rebels: it is before them in the beautiful maturity of established fact, attested by sixty-two years of national experience, and witnessed throughout its progress by an admiring world! Where does the sun, in all his compass, shed his beams on a country freer, better, happier than this? Where does he behold more diffused prosperity, more active industry, more social harmony, more abiding faith, hope, and charity? Where are the foundations of private right more stable, or the limits of public order more inviolately observed? Where does labor go to his toil with an alerter step, or an erecter brow, effulgent with the heart-reflected light of conscious independence? Where does agriculture drive his team a-field with a more cheery spirit, in the certain assurance that the harvest is his own? Where does commerce launch more boldly her bark upon the deep, aware that she has to strive but with the tyranny of the elements, and not with the more appalling tyranny of man?

"The day is past forever when religion could have feared the consequences of freedom. In what other land do so many heaven-pointing spires attest the devotional habits of the people? In what other land is the altar more faithfully served, or its fires kept burning with a steadier lustre? Yet the temples in which we worship are not founded on the violated rights of conscience, but erected by willing hands; the creed we profess is not dictated by arbitrary power, but is the spontaneous homage of our hearts; and religion, viewing the prodigious concourse of her voluntary followers, has reason to bless the auspicious influence of democratic liberty and universal toleration. She has reason to exclaim, in the divine language of Milton, 'though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple! for who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing.' The soundness of this glorious text of religious liberty has now been approved to the world by the incontestable evidence of our national experience, since it is one of those 'columns of true majesty' on which our political fabric stands. Let bigotry and intolerance turn their lowering eyes to our bright example, and learn the happy, thrice happy consequences, both to politics and religion, from placing an insuperable bar to that incestuous union, from which, in other lands, such a direful brood of error's monstrous shapes have sprung.

"It is one of the admirable incidents of democracy, that it tends, with a constant influence, to equalize the external condition of man. Perfect equality, indeed, is not within the reach of human effort.

"Strength must ever have an advantage over weakness; sagacity over simplicity; wisdom over ignorance. This is according to the ordination of nature, and no institutions of man can repeal the decree. But the inequality of society is greater than the inequality of nature; because it has violated the first principle of justice, which nature herself has inscribed on the heart,—the equality, not of physical or intellectual condition, but of moral rights. Let us then hasten to retrace our steps wherein we have strayed from this golden rule of democratic government. This only is wanting to complete the measure of our national felicity.

"There is no room to fear that persuasion to this effect, though urged with all the power of logic and all the captivating arts of rhetoric, by lips more eloquent than those which address you now, will lead too suddenly to change. Great changes in social institutions, even of acknowledged errors, cannot be instantly accomplished without endangering those boundaries of private right which ought to be held inviolate and sacred. Hence it happily arises that the human mind entertains a strong reluctance to violent transitions, not only where the end is doubtful, but where it is clear as the light of day and beautiful as the face of truth; and it is only when the ills of society amount to tyrannous impositions that this aversion yields to a more powerful incentive of conduct. Then leaps the sword of revolution from its scabbard, and a passage to reformation is hewn out through blood. But how blest is our condition, that such a resort can never be needed! 'Peace on earth, and good will among men,' are the natural fruits of our political system. The gentle weapon of suffrage is adequate for all the purposes of freemen. From the armory of opinion we issue forth in coat of mail more impenetrable than ever cased the limbs of warrior on the field of sanguinary strife. Our panoply is of surest proof, for it is supplied by reason. Armed with the ballot, a better implement of warfare than sword of the 'icebrook's temper,' we fight the sure fight, relying with steadfast faith on the intelligence and virtue of the majority to decide the victory on the side of truth. And should error for awhile carry the field by his stratagems, his opponents, though defeated, are not destroyed: they rally again to the conflict, animated with the strong assurance of the ultimate prevalence of right.

"What bounds can the vision of the human mind descry to the spread of American greatness, if we but firmly adhere to those first principles of government, which have already enabled us, in the infancy of national existence, to vie with the proudest of the century-nurtured states of Europe? The Old World is cankered with the diseases of political senility and cramped by the long-worn fetters of tyrannous habit. But the empire of the West is in the bloom and freshness of being. Its heart is unseared by the prejudices of 'damned custom;' its intellect unclouded by the sophisms of ages. From its borders, kissed by the waves of the Atlantic, to

from the inland oceans of the North, to the sparkling surface of the tropical sea, rippled by breezes laden with the perfumes of eternal summer, our vast theatre of national achievement extends. What a course is here for the grand race of democratic liberty! Within these limits a hundred millions of fellow-beings may find ample room and verge enough to spread themselves and grow up to their natural eminence. With a salubrious clime to invigorate them with health, and a generous soil to nourish them with food; with the press—that grand embalmer not of the worthless integuments of mortality, but of the offsprings of immortal mind—to diffuse its vivifying and ennobling influences over them; with those admirable results of inventive genius to knit them together, by which space is deprived of its power to bar the progress of improvement and dissipate the current of social amity; with a political faith which acknowledges as its fundamental maxim the golden rule of Christian ethics, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you;' with these means, and the constantly-increasing dignity of character which results from independence, what bounds can be set to the growth of American greatness? A hundred millions of happy people! A hundred millions of co-sovereigns, recognizing no law but the recorded will of a majority; no end of law but mutual and equal good; no superior but God alone!"

The keen admiration for Forrest prevalent among the democratic masses had already led to frequent suggestions of him as a candidate for political honors. His appointment as orator quickened the scent of friends and foes in this direction. In the public prints the thought of his nomination was advocated by some and satirized by others. The following paragraph gives a glimpse into the life of the time:

"There is talk of sending our tragedian to Washington, to act a real part on the political stage. By all means. Look at the play-writers in Parliament,—Sheridan, Bulwer, Shiel, Talfourd! Our friend Knowles is spoken of for a seat in the Commons. Why not Forrest? Down with all illiberality, we say, in such matters. Let Forrest have a seat in Congress. We like variety. And in these dog-days we like a little frolic and fun, and insist upon a thundering audience for the oration to begin with, and then we will clear the way for the Congressional election. But fair and softly: what are we to do with his friend Leggett? They cannot be separated: they must go together, like two figs in a jar. If Forrest has a seat in Congress, Leggett must have a stool near him. He can have a seat like a delegate, you know, from a Territory, having a voice but no vote. We can manage that. He can go from Coney Island without opposition, and it is essentially necessary that he should go. Suppose Forrest should break down in a speech on the Northeastern boundary, on the currency, on the Western land interests, or on any other great constitutional or legal question, he has only to turn round to his friend and say, in that remarkably silver voice of his, 'York, you are wanted!'"

Some scurrilous spirits charged that the oration delivered by Forrest was not his own composition, but was furnished by his friend Leggett. Leggett immediately published a point-blank denial, and affirmed that he had nothing whatever to do with it. In a short time the anticipated move was made; and, after careful consideration, it received the following reply:

"Philadelphia, Oct. 17th, 1838.

"To George Seaman, John A. Morrill and Edmund J.
"Porter.

"Gentlemen,—The circular letter addressed to me by you as Chairman and Secretaries of the New York Democratic Republican Nominating Committee for nominating Representatives to Congress, reached me just as I was leaving the city, and I embrace the earliest moment of leisure since my arrival here to write you in reply.

"To the first question proposed by the Nominating Committee, I take great pleasure in returning an affirmative answer. The complete separation of the political affairs of the country from the private interests of trade, and especially from those of corporate banking institutions, I regard as a consummation greatly to be desired by every friend of popular government and of the equal rights of man. I have already, on a recent public occasion, expressed my sentiments on this subject, in general terms indeed, but with an earnestness which, in some measure, may have evinced how deeply-seated is my dread of the selfish and encroaching spirit of traffic, and of the aristocratic character and tendency of chartered monopolies, wielding, almost without responsibility, the fearful instrument of associated wealth. Not only do I approve most cordially the plan of the administration for an independent treasury, and the separation of Bank and State, but fervently do I hope that the same democratic principles of legislation may guide the action of every member of the confederacy until, at no distant day, the last link shall be sundered which now, in any portion of this republic, holds the general and equal good of the community in fatal subserviency to the sordid interests of a few.

"To the first branch of your second question, also, I respond in the affirmative; and so strong is my desire for the success of those measures in support of which the Democracy is now contending, that, although my professional engagements will call me, at the time of the election, to a distance from the city of New York, I shall not let a very considerable pecuniary sacrifice deter me from visiting it during the three days, that my ballot may swell the majority which, I trust, the Democracy of the metropolis of the Empire State will give on the side of those contested principles which seem to me to lie at the very foundation of popular liberty and to be essential to the permanency of our political fabric.

"But to your last inquiry,—while impressed with a lively sense of gratitude to those who have deemed my name worthy to be placed among the number from which you are to select persons to discharge the important duty of representatives to the national legislature,—I am constrained to offer you a negative reply.

"It was intimated to me, when I was honored with an invitation to pronounce an address before the Democracy of New York on the late Anniversary of our Independence, that my name might possibly be afterwards put in nomination on the list of candidates for Congress. While I consented, promptly and cheerfully, to deliver the oration, I at the same time explicitly disclaimed any ulterior views. The duties of legislation, I thought, could not be adequately discharged without more preparatory study and reflection than I had yet found time to bestow upon the subject, and I felt unwilling to owe to the misjudging partiality of my fellow-citizens an honor due to the merits of some worthier man, as sincere in the cause of Democracy as myself, and more able to do it service. My plans had also been arranged to pursue my present profession for a few years longer, during which time I hoped that the sedulous devotion of my leisure to political study and observation might render me more capable, should I hereafter be called to any public trust, of filling it with credit to myself and advantage to the community. These are the views which I expressed in reply to the committee by whom I was invited to deliver an oration on the Fourth of July; and by these views my mind continues to be swayed. I therefore, gratefully acknowledging the partial kindness of that estimate of my talents and character which placed my name before you, respectfully decline being a candidate for nomination.

"With much consideration,

"I have the honor to be, etc.,

"Edwin Forrest."

The "Broker of Bogota" was in many respects the most meritorious of all the prize-plays elicited by Forrest. It was written by Robert Montgomery Bird, but was of a wholly different order from his other tragedies. Brought out first in 1834 with marked success, it had been suffered to lie in neglect for some time, both because of the difficulty of finding satisfactory performers for the secondary parts in it, and because the piece, while especially admired by refined and cultivated judges, lacked those showy scenes and exciting points which attract the crowd. But it was ever a particular favorite with Forrest himself, who always delighted to play it, and always spoke of it with enthusiasm and with deep regret that it was so much too fine for his average audiences that he was obliged largely to lay it aside for noisier and more glaring performances with not one tithe of its merit. Having taken unwearied pains to perfect himself even to the very minutest details in the representation of the title-rôle, he now reproduced this play, and continued occasionally to repeat it, wherever he felt confident of an appreciative audience, up to his last year upon the stage. In the series of plays with which the name of Forrest is identified, this one is of so unique a character that we must try to give some distinctive idea of it; though it is difficult to do so.

The great passions of patriotism, liberty, ambition, revenge, public spirit and enterprise, with their imposing accompaniments of conflict and spectacle, are wholly absent from the piece. And yet it was written expressly for Forrest, and by one who knew him in his inmost peculiarities. And, despite the seeming strangeness of the assertion, he never appeared in a part better fitted to his true being. It is a purely domestic drama, a drama of individual and family affections and trials. Its delineation was a dissection of the human heart in its most common and familiar elements, only carried by circumstances to an extreme intensity.

Baptista Febro is an old man doing a large business in Bogota as a banker, conveyancer, money-lender, and legatee. He is widely known and respected for his ability and his scrupulous integrity; he is honest, frank, and humble to his employers; nevertheless imperative in his family, though just and kind. The two pre-eminent passions which dominate him are his personal honor and his parental affection. His daughter Leonor is devotedly attached to her father; but his son Ramon is a dissipated and ungrateful youth, whose vicious ways cause the old man the keenest anguish. Febro turns his son away and refuses him support, hoping by the consequent distress to lead him to repentance and reformation. His heart torn with anxiety and bleeding with wounded love, he watches for some signal of improvement or some overture for reconciliation from his prodigal boy; but in vain. Ramon meanwhile, who is more weak than wicked, is the helpless tool of an abandoned young noble, Caberero, whom he has taken for a friend. Caberero is a cool, dashing villain, utterly without conscience or fear, a brilliant and hardened scoundrel, who fairly illuminates with his lurid deviltry every scene in which he appears. Febro, learning these facts, sends for Caberero and has a personal interview with him. He first attempts to hire Caberero to give up his intimacy with Ramon and leave the young man in freedom to follow the promptings of his own better nature and the solicitations of his father. The contrast of the invulnerable insolence of the rascal, his shameless betrayal of his own unprincipled character and habits, with the earnest affection and simple sincerity and honorable concern which agitated the old man, was a moral lesson of the strongest kind, set in a dramatic picture of the finest art. Then, finding all efforts at persuasion useless, the scorn and indignation of the righteous man and the injured father gradually mount in his blood till they break out in a paralyzing explosion of gesture and speech. Towering in the grandeur of his own moral passion, and backed by that dynamic atmosphere, of public opinion which invisibly enspheres the good man pitted against the scoundrel, the broker makes the noble cower and flee before the storm of his angry contempt.

Ramon is slowly driven to desperation by his vices and their natural fruits. Caberero, malignantly resenting the denunciation and disdain of Febro, resolves to break into his vaults and rob him of his deposits. With diabolical ingenuity he entangles Ramon in the plot. They succeed, and arrange matters so that it seems as if the robbery were a pretence and a fraud on the part of the broker himself. He is brought before the viceroy, accused, and condemned. Deprived of his property, of his son, and, above all of his honor, the unhappy old man is almost crushed; yet his consciousness of virtue sustains him, and his bearing in the presence of the real culprits and his deceived judges, marked by every sign and attribute of conscious rectitude as he appeals to God for his final vindication, is a most impressive revelation of human nature in a scene of extraordinary trial. Meanwhile, the shame and grief of Febro are topped by a new calamity. Tidings are brought him that his daughter has eloped, and that he is left desolate indeed. But now Juanna, the betrothed of Ramon, who believes Febro incapable of the dishonor charged on him, meets the young man and denounces him for not defending his father. He tells her the facts of the case. Amazed at such baseness, her conscience treads their troth under foot, and she spurns the hideous criminal, and flies to the viceroy to vindicate Febro. There she finds the broker searching for his daughter. Her story is told and verified. The joy and gratitude and noble pride of the old man at the removal of the stigma from his name made an exquisite moral climax. Then it is also announced to him that his daughter is not lost, but is the honorable wife of the son of the viceroy. This delightful surprise breaks on his previous pleasure like a new morn risen on mid-noon. But, alas, his hapless and guilty Ramon,—where is he? What dreadful fate awaits him? At this moment a messenger enters with the statement that Ramon, in a revulsion of remorse and despair, had committed suicide by precipitating himself from a cliff. The sudden reversal of emotion in the already over-tried Febro is too much; it snaps the last chord. As if struck in the brain with an invisible but deadly blow, he gazes first wildly, then vacantly, around, stretches out his hands in a piteous gesture of supplication, staggers, and falls lifeless on the floor.

To those who thought of Forrest as heaving the most ponderous bar and fitted only for the rugged characters of the gymnastic school, his impersonation of the "Broker of Bogota" was a surprise. There were no sensational adjuncts in it, no roll of drum, gaudy procession, or drawing of swords,—nothing but the naked, simple drama of real life in its familiar course. But he never exhibited a more perfect piece of professional workmanship. His portraiture of the business dealings between the upright and courteous old broker and his varied customers,—the torturing struggle of his sense of justice and his parental affection,—the withering curse in which his pent agony burst on the sneering villain in whom he saw the spoiler of his boy,—the heart-rending wail with which he sorrowed over the sinfulness of his darling, "Would to Heaven he had never been born!"—the alternating crisis of suspense and fulfilment as the plot proceeds through gloom and gleam of crime and innocence to the last awful climax, where the mystery is transferred from time and human judgment through despair and death into eternity and to the unknown tribunal there,—all were represented with the almost microscopic fidelity of a pre-Raphaelite picture. Nothing seemed wanting, nothing seemed superfluous. Every tone, every glance, every gesture, every step, contributed towards shaping out the ideal. The performance bore the impress of a study as close and patient as that given to a household scene in the masterpieces of the Dutch school of painting. But to appreciate it as it deserved there was required an audience of psychologists, critically interested in the study of human nature, and curious as to its modes of individual manifestation. The general multitude must feel it to be rather dull and tiresome. It was in this respect like the "La Civile Morte" of Salvini, which, though perhaps his most absolutely perfect piece of acting in its minute truth, was yet felt by many to be tedious,—by the few to be most marvellous in its fascination.

One of the most striking examples of the skill and power of Forrest as an artist is given in the distinction he always made in his rendering of old age as seen respectively in Richelieu, in Lear, and in Febro. How does he translate the wily craft, the pitilessness, the mocking tenderness, of the first of these? He does it in so just and human a manner, with so little of that blunt and electrizing power which he displays in some other parts, that one who had not seen him in Lear would be disposed to believe this his greatest representation of age. The broken yet gigantic power of the old Lear in his fearful malediction of Goneril is overwhelming, and gives a new idea of the possible force of an aged and almost worn-out man. Lear is savagely straightforward and honest. In the first scenes he sweeps the spectators along with him in his passion and his rage. When maddened by the injuries of his unnatural children, he still is artful and clear. His very actions are unmistakable indications of his thoughts, and the last scene of the tragedy deserves to stand alone as a picture of suffering age in which past energy and passion spasmodically assert themselves. Let this be contrasted with the half-simulated decadence of Richelieu's powers. One feels from the very manner of the artist that this is but partially real,—that a moment of success may kindle into new life the man prostrated by bodily weakness. It comes, and for the moment he looms before us, as if recreated by the success of the intrigue which makes him again the genuine king of France. Very different from Richelieu and from Lear is the portrait Forrest gave of Febro. Here we have hale and honorable age, plain, sincere, outspoken. There is nothing of the jocularly-dissembling craft of the cardinal,—nothing of the ferocious passion of the discrowned monarch; but all of the self-respect and candid bearing of an honorable servant, the deep affection and authority of a father, and the impulsiveness of a strong, genuine man. It is a more modest histrionic picture, none the less true because less majestic.

The reader will be pleased to peruse the following genial critique on Forrest as the "Broker of Bogota" from the pen of an unnamed but reflective and tasteful writer, who first saw the play in Washington in 1864:

"We are glad that we have seen Forrest in the 'Broker of Bogota.' His rendering of this conception has given us a nearer and a warmer view of him. In this impersonation he puts off the armor of sternness and inflexibility, and lets us into the world of a heart in which there are green arbors clad with sweet flowers, where lingering sunlight wanders and happy birds sing. Right glad are we that we have seen this picture of Forrest, for it has an eloquent breath for our common humanity. It has given us a glimpse of his nature which long ago we should have rejoiced to see revealed, but whose richness we dreamed not was there. What a volume is a man's life! The heart's story,—always going on, always deepening the great drama of our being as it progresses to the mortal act,—this story, in a strong inveterate nature, writes in the public bearing and in all the features that falsehood as to his sensibilities which the dreadful pen of pride alone engraves. But we do not complain because the proud man in the conflict wears this covering of steel. In a mortal struggle with the world it is often his only safety. Heaven help the weak who falter and fall among the soft valleys of the heart when there are fastnesses of strength to scale! We are told of victims fatally poisoned by the breath of a flower whose fragrance floats at the base of a mountain where it strikes its roots. That lost one, suffocated by perfume, and that mountain, emblem of endurance and strength, are fit types of the thought we would convey. But then we do not love that any man who towers in influence above his fellows shall go thus to the grave!—that, like Byron, for example, he shall live in posterity shamed by a record which is a libel upon the romance of his soul, and written, too, by his own deathless genius. It is for this reason that we are glad to have seen Forrest as the 'Broker of Bogota.' Here he uplifts the veil, tears away the mask, and exhibits the tenderness which, like a deep vein of gold, is intermixed with the iron in the mine where his intellect sinks the shaft. Forrest, all of him, his virtues and his faults, is an American product. He is no common man. His power has a wider range than is given to that of the mere actor. This is evident from the fact that all over the nation he elicits the warmth of the partisan. His friends love him as men love a leader. His enemies, we think, do not understand him. If apology, therefore, be needed, thus we have given it for this somewhat personal criticism. We regard the Broker as Forrest's masterpiece. In it there are vehement power, flexibility, tenderness, sensibility, and all the light and shade which belong to our full humanity. The story of the play is the love of an honest, haughty, avaricious, fond old man for an erring son, whom he seeks to redeem from dissipation and bad friends. It is the love of the father for his boy, compared to which his coffers of gold become as dross in his sight,—always peeping with the eyes of a dove from the ark of the old man's heart, waiting for the deluge of evil passions to subside in his child, that the olive-branch may be wafted to him,—it is this love, sublime in forgiveness, ample for protection, and which at last breaks his heart, that is so painted here by the player as to make a dramatic movement of which Shakspeare might have been the author. And it is this which we have called the poem of Forrest's heart. A man of his intractable mould could not thus simulate. There is a limit to that sort of power which art cannot pass. In every detail this picture is so tenderly toned, so livingly brought from the canvas, that it must be a real revelation."

Another new part which Forrest in 1838 essayed with good success was that of Claude Melnotte, in the brilliant and popular play of "The Lady of Lyons," by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. Forrest, never having seen the play performed, created his rôle afresh, and was the first actor who ever represented it in America. This drama, as is well known to the theatrical and reading world, is rich in eloquent language and in the varied movement and surprises of its plot, shifting from the still life of the peasant class to the pomp and clang of court and camp. The hero is the son of a poor gardener, who, in his humble garb and lot, has a soul full of poetry and aspiration. He falls in love with the proud Pauline Deschapelles, and writes to her impassioned verses, which she scorns as coming from one so much beneath her in station. Claude, half maddened, assumes the dress and rank of the Prince of Como, and wooes and wins and weds her. Then, revealing his true name and person, he enlists in the army, goes to the wars, fights his way to an illustrious renown and the baton of a marshal, returns, and wooes and wins his bride anew. The whole character and the motives of its situations differ most widely from all the parts in which Forrest had gained his celebrity as an actor; and his friends shook their heads with doubt when he proposed to attempt so novel and foreign a part. But his intelligence and art proved quite competent to the undertaking. The transformation he underwent, as shown by his picture when costumed for the character, is a surprising evidence of his true dramatic faculty. Instead of the weighty tragedian, whose Romanesque stateliness and volcanic fire filled out the ideals of Virginius, Brutus, Spartacus, he became a gay and ardent Frenchman, elastic with ambitious hope and love. The ponderous gave way to the romantic, declamation to conversational ease, monotone to graceful variety. The wooing breathed the music of sincerity, the tones of martial pride rang like a trumpet, and the gorgeous diction of the speeches never had better justice done to it. A judicious critic of that day said, "We were never before so astonished as at the real, genuine triumph of Forrest in Claude Melnotte,—a part we had imagined so utterly unsuited to his genius. He made many points of the most effective excellence; one, for example, was in reading over the letter of Bauseant twice, the first time in a rapid, half-conscious, half-trusting manner, the second time in a slow, careful, and soliloquizing style. Nothing could be more natural than this. But we cannot do justice to the acting, as a whole, in any words at our command. It was in conception thoroughly studied and yet easy, consistently wrought out, beautiful from beginning to end, from the tender enveloping of the form of Pauline in his cloak to the calm and respectful lifting from the table of the marriage settlement. The critic who can harshly ridicule such a sincere and remarkable performance must have in his nature something bitterly hostile to the actor." Yet it must be confessed, however well the art of Forrest overcame the difficulties of the rôle, it was not one really suited to the spontaneities of his nature. The satire of his prejudiced censors stung him more than the average approval gratified him, and the performance was year by year less frequently repeated, and finally was dropped. Still, there were in it many passages exemplifying the high mission of the drama to refresh, to teach, and to uplift those who submit themselves to its influence, when an eloquent interpreter with contagious tones breathes glorious sentiments in charming words. For instance, what a heavenly revelation and longing must be given by this speech to souls of imaginative tenderness chafing under the grim realities of care and hate and neglect!

And how, to any susceptible nature not yet deadened with prosaic conceit, veneered with supercilious knowingness, such a strain as this, livingly expressed on the stage, would reveal the superiority of faith and affection to the grinding strifes of material rivalry, and open that celestial world of the ideal wherein the pauper may be a millionaire, the drudge an emperor!

In such examples the speaker behind the footlights becomes a more thrilling preacher in a more genial pulpit, and teaches, for whoever will heed, the most precious lessons in our existence.

The tragedy of "Jack Cade, the Bondman of Kent," was written by Robert T. Conrad, who, in a prefatory note, acknowledges his "indebtedness to the judgment and taste of Mr. Forrest in its preparation for the stage," and ascribes "its flattering success at home and abroad to the eminent genius of that unrivalled tragedian." Conrad took the name of the despised rebel, cleared it of the odium and calumny with which four hundred years of fierce prejudice had encrusted it, and presented the notorious insurrectionary leader not as a vulgar demagogue and a brutal leveller, but as an avenging patriot, who felt the wrongs of the down-trodden masses and animated them to assert their rights. In place of Jack Cade the coarse and contemptible upstart pictured in Shakspeare, Conrad paints the portrait of Jack Cade the great English democrat of the fourteenth century. He held that there were good grounds in historic truth for this view; and, at all events, it was the only view of the character which his sympathies could embrace and shape to his purpose of producing a play at once suited to the personality of Forrest as an actor and constituting an impassioned argument for democracy. The tragedy is all on fire with democratic conviction and passion. It breathes throughout the most intense feeling of the wrongs and claims of the oppressed common people. It is a sort of battle-song of liberty, written in blood and set to music. If a poetic license, it was a generous one, thus to attempt to redeem from infamy the leader of a popular movement against the monstrous kingly, priestly, and baronial outrages under which the laboring classes had suffered so long, and attract the admiration of the people to his memory and his cause. Such was the feeling of Leggett, also, who longed to try his own hand at a drama on this very theme, but could never quite raise his literary courage to the point.

The main motive of the tragedy, then, is the exaltation of the sublimest of mortal aspirations,—the grand idea of popular liberty and equality—against unjust and cruel prerogative. It is a burning oration and poem of democracy. It is full of the horrible wrongs of the feudal system, the dreadful crime and ferocity of the past, but likewise penetrated and glorified with those thrilling sentiments of justice, freedom, and humanity which forecast the better ages yet to be. Thus, while European and retrospective in the revengeful temper that glows in its situations, it is American and prophetic in the moral and social coloring which irradiates its plot. And herein is indicated the secret of its immense popularity. The Jack Cade of Forrest stirred the great passions in the bosom of the people, swept the chords of their elementary sympathies with tempestuous and irresistible power. From the first to the last it secured and maintained a success similar to that which had previously crowned Metamora and Spartacus. The Lear of Forrest was the storm, and his Broker of Bogota the rainbow, of his passion. Othello was his tornado, which, pursuing a level line of desolation, had on either side an atmosphere of light and love that illumined its dark wings. Macbeth was his supernatural dream and entrancement of spasmodic action. Hamlet was his philosophic reverie and rambling in a charmed circle of the intellect. But Jack Cade was his incarnate tribuneship of the people, the blazing harangue of a later Rienzi inflamed by more frightful personal wrongs and inspired with a more desperate love of liberty. In it he was a sort of dramatic Demosthenes, rousing the cowardly and slumberous hosts of mankind to redeem themselves with their own right hands.

The opening of the play brings before us a vivid picture of the condition of the working-class, and the temper it had engendered; and at the same time skilfully foreshadows the character of the hero.

"The hovels of the bond discovered. Jack Straw, Dick Pembroke, Roger Sutton (bondmen), dressed coarsely, with implements of labor, as if going to their work.