exhausted from an awful day at the International Exhibition. [The letter was written in 1862.] So it was too late, and we were too weary to do honour to your hospitality. Pray show me that we were too insignificant to be missed, by forgiving me; but don't forget to ask me another time, when I will stay at home from profuse déjeûners to do better justice to an intellectual evening with you and yours." In 1856 Miss Cushman established her Roman home, and here she gathered around her all that was "brightest and best" of the throngs that resorted to the Seven Hilled City. Her famous Saturday evenings will never be forgotten by those privileged to be present. Scores came uninvited; all were welcome, and the Irish songs of the hostess, who was remarkably clever in the assumption of dialects, were a noted feature of these delightful réunions. Miss Stebbins gives a happy picture of this life in Rome; it reads like a story of an enchanted land, and so Charlotte Cushman found it. Her sympathies drew her towards the warm hearted, intellectual Italians. She ever preferred the Italian school of acting. Ristori was in her opinion a greater artist than Rachel. The French, she said, made naturalness artificial by ever straining after it; the Italians were natural, born actors, because dramatic in private life; dramatic-be it noted-not theatrical. The two will never be confounded by anyone careful in the use of language. It was only natural that this spontaneity should win the sympathies of Charlotte Cushman. artist once said to the present writer: "I don't know anything about art-it is nature." It was nature with Miss Cushman. If she were Rosalind, she made no conscious effort to enact the part; she could not be otherwise than Rosalind for the time being; if she were Meg Merrilies the very antithesis of Shakespeare's saucy, winsome heroine, the same dramatic instinct operated. Meg Merrilies was an elaborate study in effect; the make-up was something amazing in its extraordinary fidelity; but the impersonation came naturally to the artist; with the garb of Meg she put on the character; henceforth, till the curtain fell, she lost her individuality. Far less home study was bestowed on the character than could have been supposed in

looking on its absolute harmony of detail, in which not a look or tone, attitude or gesture was lacking to complete the picture.

There are those who, superb as was Miss Cushman's acting, ad. mired her readings yet more. Her Shakespearean recitations were the perfection of art, and to hear her recite "The Death of the Old Squire "was an event not to be forgotten. We shall ever remember how Miss Cushman positively thrilled her hearers with this marvellous effort of dramatic power.

It was not till the spring of 1869 that the malady which finally proved fatal to this great artist first showed itself. She was advised by eminent physicians whom she consulted to live well and take rest. This advice, unhappily, was not followed. Hoping to obtain health through quicker means, Miss Cushman underwent a painful operation. Temporary relief was afforded, only to bring back the disease with renewed vigour, and in 1870, believing that her days were numbered, the artist broke up her Roman home and sailed for America. She took up her residence in a beautiful villa which she had had built for her at Newport, Rhode Island, but she still continued to act and read. Miss Stebbins writes of these closing years of a noble and laborious life: "The record of Miss Cushman's achievements during these last years is simply marvellous when we consider her rapid movements from place to place, the miles of railway travel she undertook, and the amount of work she performed under conditions so unfavourable." "She was content," adds her biographer, "that the machine should wear out rather than rust out."

At length, however, it became apparent that the stage must be quitted or sudden collapse would ensue. In 1874 Miss Cushman made her last appearance in New York at Booth's Theatre. Never did artist receive a greater ovation; the play was "Macbeth," and when the curtain fell on the tragedy, Miss Cushman appeared on the stage, amid a galaxy of all that was famous and brilliant in art and letters in the Empire City. After the recitation of the ode, "Salve, Regina," an address by the venerable William Cullen Bryant was

given, and Miss Cushman replied in a speech which is a model of graceful style, simple earnestness and noble sentiment. Every young artist should "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest" that speech; for it set forth the two grand truths that Charlotte Cushman valued above even her genius as the secrets of her success, devotion and work. At the close of the ceremonial, the horses were taken from the artist's carriage, and she was escorted in triumph to her hotel, nor would the vast throngs in the street be satisfied till she had appeared in the balcony. Philadelphia and Boston followed, and at both the honours showered upon the artist and the enthusiasm equalled, if they did not surpass, New York.

After this Miss Cushman went on more than one reading tour; but the end was rapidly and steadily approaching. Physicians did what they could for her, but they could not stay the march of the destroyer.

Her last days were characteristic of the woman who never could endure inactivity, and never yielded to sickness. She did not really take to her bed till within two or three days of her death. She would sit all day in an arm-chair reading, writing, and receiving friends, always cheerful, loving, fascinating as ever; she never complained, though she suffered tortures of pain; the beautiful unselfishness of her character never yielded to her own weakness and anguish; she was thinking of others; and gentler, meeker, more docile patient no nurse ever knew. Always sincerely and consistently religious, her firm faith sustained her under the cruel trials she was called on to endure; and if human love could have saved a life, then would hers have been saved from the very gates of death. We might have wished this life so splendid in its genius, its moral worth, its great influence for good, to have been longer spared, but perhaps it was better as it was. She could not have endured inactivity; an existence of enforced idleness would have been one long agony to her. It was a merciful hand that, when she could work no more, took her away to that rest which knows not stagnation.

The lessons of such a life need no enforcing. He who runneth may read. Charlotte Cushman was not of those who despise the art that

leads them to fame. She was a true artist and true woman. She loved the art which she so adorned with a singleness of purpose, with a devotion that made it a creed. She would as soon have cast contumely on her mother's name as cried down the drama. She saw the art as it is, not as the foul overlaying of tinsel has sometimes made it, choking ignorant minds with prejudice; and no artist, man or woman, has done more for that grand art which "holds the mirror up to nature" than did Charlotte Cushman. She showed the world that the ideal artist is, and can be, a living fact, spotless in fame as splendid in genius; religious, earnest, self-forgetful, sans peur et sans reproche. How many women living in the imagined immunity from peril of a husband's home could show us such a life as this? Let the testimony of Charlotte Cushman herself, who spoke from a long and extended knowledge of all phases of society, be ever remembered when the old outcry is lifted against the stage. The great artist publicly stated that she had known purer lives, nobler characters, more generous actions among the women who acted behind the footlights than among the women who moved in private society.

MISCELLANEA.

GIRL GRADUATES.-The heading of this article is a prophecy rather than a description. The sweet girl graduates of Mr. Tennyson's poem cannot be said to have their counterparts as yet in England; for the girls are not, except in the University of London, allowed to graduate; and even there the permission has not been granted long enough to be used. But in more than one institution they are receiving an education which would enable them to take degrees and honours. Of one of these we propose now to give an account. Proper introductions conceded, it is not so difficult to gain admission to Girton College as the Northern Prince and his two companions found it to enter the portals of the kindred establishment founded by Mr. Tennyson. Girton stands something over two miles out of Cambridge, about four miles from the railway station. It is to be reached by a steady ascent along a straight high-road, and when you have mounted so high as to be exactly level with the roof of St. John's College, Cambridge, you shall find Girton College on the right hand-an Elizabethan mansion, low, red, and rectangular. It has been built little more than five years; but it happily does not obtrude a sense of newness. The dull red brick building might have stood there for half a century as far as its appearance testifies to the contrary to a casual observer. Trees and shrubs do not seem to take kindly to the situation.

There is