PROFESSIONAL TOUR IN GREAT BRITAIN.
Two weeks of rest in his Philadelphia home, in delightful¹ reunion with his mother and sisters, and two weeks more devoted² to the banquets and parties with which his rejoicing friends there and in New York celebrated³ his return, passed quickly. He had now to prepare to say good-bye again. For overtures⁴ of such a flattering character had been made to him while in England to return and give a series of performances in the principal British theatres, that he had accepted them, and was engaged to be there early in October. The desire, however, after his long absence, to see him on the stage was so general, and was urged so eagerly, that he determined⁶ to appear for a few nights. Accordingly, he played the parts of Damon, Othello, and Spartacus for five nights in the Chestnut⁷ Street Theatre, in Philadelphia, and the same parts, with the addition of Lear, in the Park Theatre, in New York. The crowd and the excitement on the opening night were almost unprecedented⁸, all the passages to the house being blocked with applicants⁹ two hours before the rising of the curtain. At the first glimpse of the actor in his stately senatorial garb¹⁰, the multitude that filled the entire auditorium¹¹ with a packed mass of faces rose as by one impulse and hailed him with deafening¹² applause, kept up until it seemed as if it was not to end. He had never played better, by general consent, than he did this night. And when the play closed, and the enthusiastic

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