Let no one who has not seen him at his best-from 1840 to 1862-and we have no right to judge any man but by his best-say that we have exaggerated either the services or the merits of Samuel Phelps. Only those who are keenly gifted with the dramatic sense, and have made the rational amusement of the people the devoted study of years, can adequately appreciate the arduousness of the former, and the wonderful variety and surpassing excellence of the latter. That he did much for the intellectual pleasure and elevation of those of his day and generation none can doubt; and more will assuredly be accomplished when the State ceases to vex, if not disgrace, the age by allowing such services to go unrecognized and unhonoured; and especially when the Church, following the lead of the more catholic-souled of her prelates,* enters into active alliance with such men as Samuel Phelps. It is unnecessary to speak here of the solicitude of the antique world for everything affecting the interests of the drama, whose written survivals still constitute, as it were, a field sacred to Apollo, whereon the learned of all lands hold tourney, when they would prove their claims to the laurels of classic scholarship. A like honour by nations yet unborn, we may rest well assured, awaits Shakespeare and his fellows. But, without forestalling the future, or harking back to the distant past, we have examples nearer our own time of intelligent appreciation of the drama's great educational value. The Mediæval Church had a practical understanding of all this, whether the abbeys and minsters scattered over England, and with which it is still glorified, be monuments of the fervid piety and free-will offerings of the people, or only of the exactions of those in power, jealous for God's glory, and not, perhaps, unmindful of their own. The religious world of to-day would have a beneficent knowledge of it, too, were it not for the lingering dregs of that Puritanic fever which afflicted the land in the seventeenth century, and whose recurrence, in a * See Archbishop Tait's remarks on this subject at p. 14. more or less aggravated form, can never be regarded as altogether beyond the bounds of possibility, so long as popular emotion, when divorced from common-sense, is apt to expend itself in periodic fits of destructive insanity. We must not forget, however, though at the risk of repeating what is familiar and trite, that all men, movements, and manias. have their mission; and that even the "righteous over-much," or, as another inspired writer calls them, "the unco guid," have something to say—or piously believe they have-for the unconscionable presumption of those "rebukes," with which they so persistently arrest and smother the natural, God-given, joy of the human heart. When the two great institutions, then,-the Church and the Stage, whose united function it is to lift us into the higher and cheerier life, are at one, and the ministry of the priest is as earnest as that of the player, and the latter, as well as the former, receives from the State his due meed of countenance and honour, then, and only then, may we hope to see light in dark places, and a worthy crowning to national education, whether the studies of our youth have been necessarily confined to the Board-school, or have happily been pursued under the fostering care of an Alma mater. All the strengthening hopes and possibilities just indicated, and which will one day become to the people grateful actualities, were ever present to the mind of our master. As a manager and actor, determined to give of his best to the public, and put into his work his whole heart and soul and strength, Samuel Phelps was without fear; and, as a man, without reproach. In every relation of life he was tender, dignified, and righteous; and in what pertained to the traditions and glory of the English stage, he was the. last of all the Romans. JOHN FORBES-ROBERTSON. 25, Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury, 25th June, 1886. PORTRAITS. MR. PHELPS AS CARDINAL WOLSEY, FROM THE PAINTING IN LIFE AND LIFE-WORK OF SAMUEL PHELPS. INTRODUCTION. SAMUEL PHELPS inherited the instincts of a gentleman, and throughout the whole of his career he never forgot that he was one. He was, therefore, of good family, and, though not what is called college-bred, of good education. He was a doting husband and father and a fast friend. Exceedingly fond of children, he would often take an infant out of the arms of any nurse he might meet in his walks and kiss it. Attached to his home, he would rather dine with his family on plain fare than sit down to a banquet without them. Not that he by any means despised good things; for, when they came in his way, nothing pleased him more than having a few friends round his table to share them with him. He had a great liking for gardening and even agriculture, and, had he been able to retire early in life, he would have made a good country gentleman. At Chelsea, where he resided from 1840 to 1844, he had a large piece of ground attached to his house, where he grew some beautiful specimens of choice flowers and plants, giving them his own personal attention. He was as pleased with his achievements in this way as he was with his success on the stage. His gardener for the greater part of this period was an B |