"We have to turn over the pages of theatrical history in order to find a parallel to this demonstration of affection coupled to gratitude. And after the excitement of it was over, we, who had learnt to love her perfectly portrayed art and sweet presence, sighed to think that she would no longer grace the stage." Continuing, the _Times_ critic said:--
"This remarkable manifestation of popular favour and regard is worth recording, not only as a striking theatrical incident, which those who were present can never forget, but because it proves that the frequenters of even the pit and gallery of a theatre where, till Miss Terry came, the finer springs of dramatic effect have very rarely been drawn on, can rapidly be brought to recognise and value acting of a singularly refined and delicate kind--so refined and delicate indeed that some of those who profess to guide the public taste have been apt to insist on its wanting physical power. On Saturday night it was made evident to demonstration, if other evidence had been wanting, that Miss Terry had wrought her spells over the frequenters of pit and gallery as well as of boxes and stalls. In the interests of refined dramatic art this is a cheering set-off to many indications that seem to make the other way. It shows that if the theatrical masses--those who are roughly lumped up as the 'British Public'--are unable to discriminate nicely between diamonds and paste, and so take a good deal of coarse glassware for real stones, they are nevertheless susceptible to the influence of refined, earnest, intelligent, and conscientious acting when they have the rare opportunity of seeing it. How well Miss Terry's acting merits all these epithets has been abundantly proved, not only through her recent course of farewell performances, in which she has filled a range of parts so widely different as to show a variety of power in itself as rare as the grace, refinement, intelligence, and feeling she has put into her acting from four years old to four-and-twenty."
Surely few actresses have won such heartfelt and well-merited words of praise as these? No wonder that the thousands to whom she had given endless delight grudged her her early won freedom from the perpetual anxieties of stage life.