Sometimes the torch-dance was performed; in this each performer bore in his hand a long lighted taper, and endeavoured to prevent his neighbours from blowing it out, which each one tried to do if possible (Fig. 184).

Not long before she died I had been discoursing with her on the quantity of real present emotion which a great tragic performer experiences during acting.

I ventured to think, that though in the first instance such players must have possessed the feelings which they so powerfully called up in others, yet by frequent repetition those feelings must become deadened in great measure, and the performer trust to the memory of past emotion, rather than express a present one.