With a broad clown's back turned broadly to the
glory of the stars."

Let us lift our faces when we wish to judge truly of any earnest work
of the hand or mind of man, and see it placed in the widest horizon
that is given to us. Poetry, painting, sculpture, music, architecture,
all have a bearing on their time, and beyond it; and the actor, though
his knowledge may be, and must be, limited by the knowledge of his
age, so long as he sound the notes of human passion, has something
which is common to all the ages. If he can smite water from the rock
of one hardened human heart--if he can bring light to the eye or
wholesome color to the faded cheek--if he can bring or restore in ever
so slight degree the sunshine of hope, of pleasure, of gayety, surely
he cannot have worked in vain. It would need but a small effort
of imagination to believe that that great wave theory, which the
scientists have proved as ruling the manifestations of light and
sound, applies also to the efforts of human emotion. And who shall
tell us the ultimate bounds of these waves of light and sound? If
these discernible waves can be traced till they fade into impalpable
nothingness, may we not think that this other, impalpable at the
beginning as they are at the end, can alone stretch into the
dimness of memory? Sir Joshua's gallant compliment, that he achieved
immortality by writing his name on the hem of Mrs. Siddons's garment,
when he painted her as the Tragic Muse, had a deeper significance than
its pretty fancy would at first imply.

Not for a moment is the position to be accepted that the theatre
is merely a place of amusement. That it is primarily a place of
amusement, and is regarded as such by its _habitués_, is of course
apparent; but this is not its limitation. For authors, managers, and