DEATH OF EDMUND KEAN.
Wnr.r an actor qii:ta the stage, he in a manner leaves the world. Km-:AN has left the stage and the world at once. The great tragedian died at Richmond on Wednesday, after lingering for several weeks in a state almost of insensibility, with short lucid intervals, when his strength rallied for a time. During his last illness, he was reconciled to his wife, and was soothed by the attentions of his son, which cheered him in his dying hour. He had been in almost a hopeless state since the night when he broke down in the part of Othello at Covent Gar- den, having performed with his son then for the first time. The effort proved too mueli for him. He may almosObe said to have " died with harness on 11:s back." His first steps in childhood were on the boards; and he tottered frorn the stage, an old man and worn-out, at five- and- forty. His life %vas one of continued excitement, mental and bodily. The strength of his will and his animal spirits led him into excesses, which undermined his constitution. His early training was not sueh as to fit him to tread with steadiness the giddy height to which his genius raised him. He was intoxicated with his sudden success, and madly plunged hit° the vortex of dissipation. The nightly ap- plsuses of crowded audiences are any thing but sedatives to the brain of blurt who is their object. But even the errors of his personal cha- raeter were not unredeemed by amiable qualities; and his early death Silences the voice of censure.
It were superfluous now to speak of KEAN'S wonderful powers as an actor. Those Who have only seen him during the last few years of his career, can have but a faint idea of what he was in his prime. He was bitterly but the shadow of his former self. He exhibited only the wreck of his genius. Yet he was greater in ruin than other actors in their full strength. His sun had long since left the zenith of his glories ; and tiotr that it has set never to rise again, we feel less the loss to us than the gain to his name. It would have been better for hie reputation if he had quitted the boards on the first hint of his failing energies. He should have disappeared like a star, not have gone out like a rush 1 ight. But he has left behind him a fame that will last as long as the stage exists.
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