128 Full-Lengths. : [ Fes. 
be the means of conciliating one quarter of the world with England. 
Only think of the comfortable state of that man’s mind, who, having rub- 
bed a hare’s-foot over his cheek and nose, thinks himself sufficiently im- 
portant to form a connecting link between Great Britain and America ! 
This feeling may, however, be reasonably accounted for. The Actor, 
unlike every other professional man, receives admiration through so violent 
and gross a medium—it comes with such a gust-upon his senses, that he 
cannot maintain that equanimity arrived at by the poet, the painter, the 
sculptor. The man, accustomed to estimate his appearance as the signal 
of shouts and plaudits from congregated thousands, cannot soberly calcu- 
late his real importance, but is apt to confound his bearing in every other 
relation of life with his mere professional value. The admiration paid to 
men in other walks of art comes to them cooled, purified, and sweetened 
by distance—just as the voluptuous Turk draws the bounty of the weed 
through a dulcifying rivulet of rose-water. Now our Actor has it hot— 
“ burning hot ”—and rolling up around him, eyes, mouth, nose, ears, 
all take in the intoxicating vapour, and a large monster of vanity jis 
thereby generated. 
An Actor, in the full enjoyment of his art, must experience the most 
intense and violent delight. He fairly bathes himself in the plaudits 
showered around him: he seems saturated with commendation. His 
person dilates, his eye lightens, all the cares of existence are lost, annihi- 
lated, in the brief rapture of the moment The consciousness of self- 
importance knocks hardly at his heart; his pulses are at full gallop ; 
his very being is multiplied. It is to this cause that an Actor has less 
admiration for his author than has the uninitiated man. The Actor loses. 
all recollection of the dramatist in self: he is persuaded that he has 
snatched the unformed lump from the author, and, by his own feelings 
and emotions, given shape and beauty to the plastic mass! It is he 
-who has made the part. 
The low, creeping envy of the Actor is to be accounted for on the same 
principle as his conceit: the approbation paid to another reaches him 
-as loudly as that awarded to self. Actors come in more direct collision 
with one another than any kind of men besides. Hence, there is more 
envy, more low, petty intrigues, in a green-room, than in a court of 
-France. 
Popularity is the Actor’s idol. No matter how it be gained, so that 
the precious spoil—the golden bough, the glittering aureus ramus—be 
acquired. We will close our paper with a brief, yet striking illustration, 
of this passion: it may stand as an index, a finger-post, to the motives of 
our subject. A manager—who must be taken as an Actor, with all his 
feelings and frailties in the most intense state of expression, who is, 
in fact, to an actor, what prussic is to oxalic acid—some short 
time since smote, not a noble Venetian, but a famous burletta-writer : 
the blow or kick was more deadly from the place where it was applied. 
Our author cited the manager before a justice, who, however, pursuing 
the soothing system, dismissed the parties to debate the matter with 
themselves. The manager spoke eloquently in extenuation of the error : 
the author stilllooked sullen. At length the manager hit upon a golden 
expedient ; for, drawing up to the modern Lopez, he exclaimed, in alow, 
persuasive, yet prophetic voice, at the same time laying one hand, with | 
gentle significance, upon our author’s shoulder, “ Never mind—never 
mind, my boy ; it will make you popular !” J. 
