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A DRAMATIC CRITIC
deliverer of God's people Israel. It was
wonderful to see how Salvini's impersona-
tion combined these two natures; express-
ing with sensuous fullness all that was
gross and earthy in the man, and not less
effectually displaying the lofty conscious-
ness of the leader and commissioned ser-
vant of the Lord Jehovah. When directly
under the divine inspiration, as in the
second act of the play, when he perceived
in the flames that consumed his house the
presence of the I AM whom Moses knew
in the burning bush on Horeb, the face and
speech of the actor became glorious and
awful in their consciousness of Divinity;
and at lower moments, sometimes in the
midst of unholy and degrading pleasures,
a strange and m3^stical light seemed to fill
his eyes, to touch and amplify his form.
In his fatal drunkenness there was some-
thing godlike as well as pathetic, even while
the details of intoxication were shown
with remorseless truthfulness, — touches
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