"September 13. I read this morning an article in 'Putnam's Magazine,' on
Rachel. I have been much interested in this woman as a genius, though I
am pained by the accounts of her career in point of morals, and I am
wearied with the glitter of her jewelry. Night puts on a jewelled robe
which few admire, compared with the admiration for marketable jewelry.
The New York 'Tribune' descends to the rating of the value of those worn
by her, and it is the prominent point, or rather it makes the multitude
of prominent points, when she is spoken of.
"The writer in 'Putnam' does not go into these small matters, but he
attempts a criticism on acting, to which I am not entirely a convert. He
maintains that if an actor should really show a character in such light
that we could not tell the impersonation from the reality, the stage
would lose its interest. I do not think so. We should draw back, of
course, from physical suffering; but yet we should be charmed to suppose
anything real, which we had desired to see. If we felt that we really
met Cardinal Wolsey or Henry VIII. in his days of glory, would it not be
a lifelong memory to us, very different from the effect of the stage,
and if for a few moments we really _felt_ that we had met them, would it
not lift us into a new kind of being?
"What would we not give to see Julius Caesar and the soothsayer, just as
they stood in Rome as Shakspere represents them? Why, we travel hundreds
of miles to see the places noted for the doings of these old Romans; and
if we could be made to believe that we met one of the smaller men, even,
of that day, our ecstasy would be unbounded.
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