Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1855-09-08

tional character serve to suggest Greece. The
drapery which hangs upon Rachel is exquisitely
studied from the most perfect statue. There is not
q fold which is not Greek and graceful, and which
does not seem obe6ient to the same law which
touches her face with tragedy. As she slowly
opens her thin lips, your own blanch and from
her melancholy eyes all smiles and possibility OF
Joy have utterly passed away. Rachel stands
alone, a solitary statue Of fate and woo.
When she speaks, the low, thrilling, distinct
voice seems TO proceed rather from her eyes than
her mouth. II has a wan sound, il we may say so
1t is the very tone you would have predicated as
coming from that form, like the unearthtly music
which accompanies the speech OF the Commehda-
torres statue in Don Giovanni. That appearance
and that voice are the key of the whole perform
anco. Before she has spoken, you are filled with
the spirit Of an age infinitely remote, and only re
lated to human sympathy by grandeur of suffering.
The rest merely confirms that impression. The
whole is simple and intense. 1t is conceived
and fulfilled in the pnrest sense of Greek art;
OF the early career and later life Of Rachel such
romantic stories are told and believed, that only to
see the heroine Of her own life would be attraction
sufficient to draw the world to Paris. DR.. Veron,
in his Memories dun Bourgeois, from which we
have translated some entertaining paragraphs for
these pages, has described her earliest appearance
upon tho Boulevards her studies, her trials, and
her triumph. That triumph has been unequalled
in stage annals for enthusiasm and permanence.
Other actors have achieved single successes rs
brilliant but no other has held for 80 long a time
the most tickle and fastidious nation thrall to her
power; owning no rival near the throne, and rul-
ing with a sway whose splendor was only surpassed
by its sternness.
Poor Rachel has never sought to ally her genius
to goodness, and has rather despised than courted
the aid of noble character. Not a lady by birth
or breeding, she is reported to have surpassed Mes
salina in debauchery, and semiramis in luxury.
Paris teens with tales of her private life, which,
! 1yhiln ttav orn ,,n1au1fa1lv y nnpnrntnd vpt gnrvn
to show the kind Of impression her career has pro-
duced. Those modern Sybarites, the princes and
mobiles of Russia, are the heroes of her private
romances and her sumptuous apartments, ii not
II Tom dc Nesle, arc at least a bower of Rosa
mond.
AS if to show the independent superiority of her
art, she has been willing to appear, or she really
is, avaricious, mean, jealous, passionate, false
and then by her prodigious power, she has swayed
the public that so judged her, as the wind losses a
leaf. There has always been disdain in her supe-
riority. Perhaps Paris has found something fas-
%cinating in her very contempt, as in the Memories
du Diable the heroine confcsses that she loved the
ferocity of her lover. Nor is it a traditional fame
that she has enjoyed but whenever Rachel plays
the theatre is crowded, and the terror and the tears
are what they were when she began.
Rachel is the greatest of merely dramatic artists.
Others are more beautiful others are more stately
and imposing others have been fitted by external
gifts of nature to personify characters of very
marked features others are more graceful, and
lovely, and winning; most others mingle their Own
personality with the characters they assume, but
Rachel has this final evidence of genius, TINT she
is always superior to what she does her mind
prcsides over her own performances. 1t is the
perfection of art. In describing this peculiar SUI
premacy of genius, a scholar, in whose early death
a poet and philosopher were lost, says of Shake
speare, he sat pensive and alone above the hun
dred-handed play of his imagination" And Mrs
Fanny Kemble, in her Journal, describes a con
v%ersation upon the stage, in the tombstone O.
Romeo and Juliet, where she, as Juliet, says tC
Mr.. Romeo Kcppel, Where the devil is your dag
ger?" while all the fearful audience were lost il
the soft woe of the scene.