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MEMORABLE EXPERIENCES
mon touch as a rosy cloud dissolving in a
sunset glow. Mr. Partridge read Shelley
as if he were the author as well as the
interpreter of the verse. His refined and
delicate beauty of face, intensified by a
rapturous expression as if he were thrilled
by the melody which he made; the clear
tones of his cultivated voice, not widely
varied in modulation, but perfect within
a sufficient range; his absolute plasticity
and responsiveness under the thrill of the
music, combined to give his reading an
exquisitely appropriate distinction. There
was, indeed, in his delivery something
singularly lovely and impossible to de-
scribe, — the product, apparently, of a gift,
like Shelley's own, to charge mere sound
with sense, so that it seemed to bear a
message almost without the help of ar-
ticulate utterance.
The reference to Mrs. Kemble suggests
a contrast sharply noted in my mind a few
years ago. As a very young man, I had the
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