a single word, she threw the house into roars of laughter. After the trial scene, while Shylock is being finally disposed of in the foreground, Portia retired to the rear, and received the congratulations of her friends with an air and attitude which were irresistibly comic. In some readings which she gave one got new impressions of the scope and penetration of the human voice. Towards the close of their stay I read one morning in a journal named the Victorian, which represented Irish interests in political affairs, an altogether shameful attack on Charles Kean, and as respects Mrs. Kean almost ruffianly. My first impulse was to write to Mrs. Kean to tell her how much disgusted I felt, and to beg of her not to believe that it represented the opinion of Irishmen in Australia. This was her reply:—
"St. Kilda, March 31, 1864."My dear Sir,—Allow me to thank you exceedingly for your most kind letter, and at the same time to beg that you will dismiss from your mind the thought that we could for one moment imagine you would directly or indirectly sanction any 'vulgar, foul misrepresentation' concerning us. I was aware of the unprovoked malevolence with which my husband had been attacked by a certain party in Melbourne, but we had neither of us seen the journal to which you allude nor were we even conscious of its existence.
"Mr. Coppin sends us our newspapers, but he has doubtless kept anything so offensive from our sight.
"Great men in all professions are the targets against which envious pretenders shoot their clumsy arrows, but when a rabble is hired to throw mud and stones, and there is no police to act, it is time to remove with all speed from so unprotected a locality. It is a great pity that all men of standing do not combine to put down by strong demonstration a system of low abuse that must be dangerous at least to a portion of society. If men are passively tolerant of wrong they will themselves shrink from committing, and allow the young to become familiarised with unfair dealing and coarse language, how degraded and brutalised the minds of these people must become in a couple or three generations.
