Meanwhile, the popular taste of English playgoers had been educated by the impersonations of Miss Faucit as well as by her own literary expositions of Shakespeare's characters, and by the written discourses of her future husband, Sir Theodore Martin on cognate subjects. The daughter of an actress, Lady Martin received her first education for the stage from an actor, one of a race of actors, Percival Farren, of the Haymarket Theatre. This is the family which at the end of the eighteenth century gave a Countess, acknowledged on Mrs Abington's retirement to be the first actress of her day, to the Derby peerage. Its living representative, the gifted and exemplary William Farren, more than recalls to the present generation the genius of his predecessors. Soon after her arrival in London, Miss Faucit joined Macready's company, and her 'Juliet' became a classical performance. Probably the last occasion that this lady was seen on the London stage is her performance of 'Rosalind' in _As You Like It_ at Drury Lane during the sixties. As a proof that Lady Martin has exercised an abiding influence on her profession for good it is enough to mention the names of Mrs P. H. Lee, as 'Juliet,' of Mrs Boucicault, the graceful and accomplished wife of a popular husband, Miss Kate Terry (Mrs Arthur Lewis), peerless in romantic melodrama, under the lesseeship of Benjamin Webster at the Adelphi. Some bright particular star from the days of Sir Walter Scott downwards has never failed any generation of the Terry family; Henry Irving's inexhaustible co-adjutress has only illustrated anew the ancestral tradition. Artists whether of the pen or pencil, practically experienced in all the publics of Europe, have been unanimous in testifying that there is none with whom conscientious toil and excellence are so sure ultimately to yield the reward of fame and profit as the public of England.
The theatre with us was firmly established as an honourable and lucrative institution directly men of intellectual power and of competent education began to throw their energies into it as they might have done into the law, the legislature or any other of the liberal professions. Samuel Phelps was born some ten years later than Macready; he was trained in Macready's company; under him Sadler's Wells became once more the prosperous school of classical drama. Some years junior to Phelps, Walter Montgomery laboured in the same line. Both of those men unconsciously were preparing the way for Henry Irving; they were each endowed with high gifts of mind as well as with shrewd common sense. Their detractors of course were not wanting. Neither Montgomery nor Phelps, on the score of public appreciation, had more reason to complain than Henry Irving himself. If, therefore, the reason is asked for the revived popularity of the play in all grades of English life, the answer must be not so much the exceptional brilliance of individual successes as the qualifications of industry not less than aptitude which a succession of actors has brought to the vocation. Sir Henry Irving, as a stage artist may have his mannerisms or defects. Whatever career he might have embraced, he would have made his mark in it, because, besides being a great actor, he is a remarkably clever and far-seeing man. He is therefore in this way historically true to the best associations of his art.