THE TRAGEDIAN.

DECEMBER, 1852.

TEN days ago a private letter from New Orleans assured us, that the great actor of the age had arrived from the "Golden Land," was then playing an engagement in that city, and appeared in remarkably good health.

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Swiftly following this intelligence gave us hope soon again to "have sight" of the Proteus of Shakespearean character coming from the sea," and hear once more the strange inward music of his voice came last week, with "spleen of speed," the telegram that he had died on the passage to Cincinnati.

Our first feeling was the pang of a personal friendship, suddenly parted. Then came the thought that a great artist, the greatest in his sphere in our day, had passed

away; and finally, vivid images and emotions, won from that wide range of tragic character in which he so truthfully lived, came crowding into our memory.

JUNIUS BRUTUS BOOTH was born in London, May 1, 1796. He appeared on the London stage at the age of twenty, but has run the greater part of his dramatic career in this country. He was of short stature, but his presence and action were types of manliness and power. His face was cast originally in the antique Roman mould; and even many years after the untoward accident which spoiled its classic outline, it presented, on one occasion, when we were sitting by his side, a singular resemblance to the portraits of Michael Angelo.

No language can do more than recall, to those who have seen him in his most vital moods, the terrible and beautiful meaning of his look and gesture; or the charm of hist massive and resonant voice. For voice, gesture, and every fibre of his wonderful organization, were subordinated to a genius, which laid hold of and expressed, with absolute sincerity, the radical elements of character; and gave play to its minor mani

OBITUARY.

THOMAS R. GOULD.

The well-known sculptor, Thomas R. Gould, who died Saturday at his home in Florence, was born in Boston 63 years ago. For some time he was engaged in business with his brother John, now living in New-Orleans. His first figure was modeled in the studio of Seth Cheney, his first and only mas ter. After the war he went abroad with his family to study sculpture. At his pleasant home in Florence, where he has since resided, he worked diligently and produced many pieces, among them The West Wind," Cleopatra,' "Timon of Athens," "Ariel" and "John Hancock," which was exhibited at the Centennial Exposition, and now stands in the Town Hall at Lexington. His statue of Gov. Andrew, which the Grand Army of the Republic commissioned him to produce for erection in the Hingham Cemetery, is one of his well-known works. Two of his ideal studies, "Christ" and "Satan," once formed a part of the Boston Athenæum collection. The "Ghost in Hamlet" and "Steam" and "Elec. tricity," two colossal heads, placed in the vesti bule of the Boston Herald Building, have been much admired. Among the numerous portrait busts executed by Gould may be mentioned that of Emerson, in the Harvard Library; William Monroe, in the Concord Library; John A. Andrew, be. longing to the widow of the statesman, and the elder Booth, in Booth's Theatre, New-York. He was a brother of the late Samuel Gould, of Boston. He visited his native country a few months ago and was at that time in excellent health.

festations, with the spontaneous freedom and variety of nature.

We well remember how, in former times, we hungered and thirsted, in the intervals of his absence, after the intellectual beauty of his personations.

His great popularity, which time, accident, and eccentric habits seldom availed to diminish, seemed owing mainly to those fire blasts of a volcanic energy, that power of instant and tremendous concentration of passion, which was one constituent of his genius. Yet it was curious to observe a crowded and tumultuous pit, with its new comers struggling for some "coigne of vantage" in the doorways, noisily careless of the sorrows of King Henry, but hushed in a moment,

"Still as night,

Or summer's noontide air,"

as the grand, but subdued and self-communing intonations of Richard's opening soliloquy fell upon their ears.

In the cumulative and energetic evolution of character, which forms the basis of his fame, the subtler traits of Mr. Booth's delineations were often overlooked; but, to our thinking, it was this marvelous delicacy

especially which made his acting "the feast it was." It was this rare power which enabled him to follow the lead of Shakespeare's imagination, in its most secret windings and its airiest flights, and found him the sole artist of our time, worthy to present in living form the characters of Hamlet, Iago, Othello, and Lear.

Thus much have we felt impelled to say, in the hurry of the hour, in grateful memory of one from whom we have drawn deep delight and instruction; while we reserve, to some future day, an ampler notice, worthy, we trust, in some measure, of his exalted representative genius.