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458 yrith the double design of benefiting the drama and I'^licving the court of the care and ceremony incident to state visits to the public theatres. This very difBcult office Mr. Kean filled for ten years ; and, as he was wont to consult his wife on every important matter, it is fair to discern in his signal success some traces of Ellen Tree's prudence, tact, knowl- edge of human nature, and ripe professional cultivation. At the end of his first season, the queen denoted her apprecia^ tion of his services by giving him a diamond ring. In 1850 Mr. Kean became joint lessee of the Princess's Theatre, in London, of which he was left sole lessee and manager in the following year. Here began the most brilliant period of his own and his wife's theatrical career. What Charles Kemble commenced, and Macready continued, Charles Kean trium- phantly finished, — the grand and noble work of doing en^ tire justice, in their representation, to Shakspeare's plays. Strangely enough, accuracy on the stage is a modern viitue. Hamlet^ as played by Garrick, wore the wig and the knee- breeches of Garrick's time. Charles Kemble was the first to make a stand for literal correctness of costume. Macready, who took Covent Garden Theatre for his field of enterprise, in 1837, went further, and made a stand for greater correct- ness of scenery. But^ it remained for Charles Kean to do more than had ever before been attempted, by every possible auxiliary of art, skill, learning, labor, and money, to place the plays of Shakspeare on the stage in a thoroughly correct and splendid manner. That work he accomplished ; and he is said to have remarked, very late in his life, doubtless in a moment of despondency, that he had wasted the best work- ing years of his career, in endeavoring to sustain the dignity and purity of the British drama. He retired from the man- agement of the Princess's in 1860, having, within his term of nine years, made the most elaborate and brilliant revivals, not alone of k?hakspearean, but of divers other dramas. The