is the perfection of detail. It was studied, gasp by gasp, and groan
by groan, in the hospital wards of Paris, where men were dying in
agony. It is terrible, but it is true. We have seen a crowded theatre
hanging in a suspense almost suffocating over that fearful scene. Men
grew pale, women fainted, a spell of silence and awe held us
enchanted. But it was all pure art. The actor was superior to the
scene. It was the passion with which she threw herself into the
representation, with a distinct conception of the whole, and a
thorough knowledge of the means necessary to produce its effect, that
secured the success. There was a sublimity of self-control in the
spectacle, for, if she had allowed herself to be overwhelmed by the
excitement, the play must have paused; real feeling would have invaded
that which was represented, and we should, by a rude shock, have been
staring in wonder at the weeping woman Rachel, instead of thrilling
with the woes of the dying, despairing Adrienne. She seems to be what
we know she is not.

Rachel's earlier triumphs were in the plays of Racine. Certainly
nothing could show the essential worth of the old Greek dramatic
material more than the fact that it could be rendered into French
rhyme without losing all its dignity. If a man should know Homer only
through Pope's translations, he could hardly understand the real
greatness and peculiar charm of Homer. And as most of us know him in
no other way, we all understand that the eminence of Homer is conceded
upon the force of tradition and the feeling of those who have read him
in the original. So, to the reader of Racine, it is his knowledge of
the outline of the grand old Greek stories that prevents their loss of
charm and loftiness when they masquerade in French rhyme. They have
lost their sublimity, so far as treatment can effect it, while they
retain their general form of interest. But it is the splendid triumph