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ADELAIDE NEILSON
remember the beautiful Adelaide Neilson
in propria persona : the figures and faces
which are associated with her are those of
Shakespeare's heroines, every one of them
unlike every other, every one immortally
beautiful. I suspect that, as a histrionic
artist, she excelled not so much through
swift impulses and inspirations as through
her supreme docility, discretion, and re-
sponsiveness. She was always studying,
evolving, and considering fresh ideas, elim-
inating old faults, taking on new excel-
lences. She afforded in her person a rare
example of artistic and mental develop-
ment; and I have ventured to go so far in
my thought— now confided to the reader
— as to believe that of her intimacy with
the pure and lovely conceptions of the
Poet whom she sincerely reverenced she
was making a ladder upon which her soul
was mounting and to mount.
It remains to be said that, perhaps not
for all, but certainly for very many persons,
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