The last point we shall mention here about Mr. Sothern is his scrupulous attention to the minor business of the stage:  when he is not speaking himself, his looks act.  It is said of Macready that he began to be Cardinal Richelieu at three o’clock in the afternoon, and that it was dangerous to speak to him after that time.  When Mr. Sothern plays Lord Dundreary, if he is addressed on any subject during the progress of the play, he answers in his Dundreary drawl, so as not to lose his personality for a minute.  The letter from his brother “Tham” he has written out and reads; not that he does not know every word by heart, for he must have read it a hundred times, but because he wants to turn over at the proper place.  We all know what he has made of that part.  A play in which there is absolutely nothing of a plot, which would fall dead from the hands of an inferior actor, becomes with Mr. Sothern as popular as Rip van Winkle is with Jefferson to play the sleepy hero.  It is to be observed that the three essentials for good acting just mentioned—­repose of manner, strict attention to dress, and strict attention to minor details of stage-business—­may be acquired by any actor of average intellect who will devote proper time and study to the task:  they are not, like a fine figure, a handsome face or a sonorous voice, adventitious gifts of Fortune which may be bestowed on one mortal and denied to another.  Mr. Sothern owes his success, evidently, to long and careful preparation of his parts.  In David Garrick he leaves but two points at which criticism can carp:  his pathos somehow lacks sufficient tenderness, his love-making seems too devoid of passion.  When young Garrick won the heart of La Violette, he put more fire into his speech and manner than Mr. Sothern exhibits at the close of the last act.  He is represented as always loving Ida Ingot, but at first conceals and suppresses his love:  when the avowal comes at last, it should be like the bursting forth of a volcano, hot, fiery and irresistible.

M. M.

NOTES.

Sir Richard Wallace evidently aims to make himself, in a small way, the Peabody of Paris.  A cynic might maintain that his gifts were a trifle sensational, and shaped with a view to procure the greatest amount of notoriety at the price; but that they are frequent, and that they show a hearty love for Paris on the Englishman’s part, none can deny.  It was Sir Richard who not long ago gave about five thousand dollars to the use of the Paris poor; it was he who, in the late hunting-season, is said to have proposed to supply the city hospitals with fresh game—­whether of his own shooting or of that of his compatriots does not appear; it is he, in fine, who has furnished to Paris eighty street-fountains, costing in the factory six hundred and seventy-five francs each, or a total of fifty-four thousand francs (say ten thousand eight hundred dollars), the expense of setting them up being