ners of the county militia hoisted over the Lord-Lieutenant's chair. It was doubtless correct, and as undoubtedly ugly. It seemed like Puseyism out of place.

Decoration, then, has its limits as regards the beautiful; it has also its limits as respects the actors. Although, as we have remarked already, they are subservient to the poet, they are on the other hand of primary consequence in relation to the scene. So much of the costume or the scenery as calls off attention from the actor is excess; and if an audience be attracted to Lear or Othello, because in the one drama they will find an exact representation of British life, and in the other of Venetian magnificence, the purpose would be better answered by a panorama. In fact, our present managers seem unwittingly hurrying into an error which both the Athenians and the Romans committed in such matters, centuries ago. At Athens, no expense, latterly, was thought too great for the service of the theatre. In the midst of wars, the public treasury was heavily taxed on behalf of the Dionysiac festivals; private fortunes squandered upon the equipment of the choruses; gold, and ivory, and silk were lavished upon the proscenium, the altar, and the players' dresses. Yet in the very same age an act was passed forbidding the master works of the three great Athenian dramatists to be acted, and commanding them to be read at the Bacchic solemnities. Tragedy was buried under its own pomp; money could not supply the dearth of befitting actors: the Athenians had not resolution enough to check scenic excess, though they had taste enough to guard Eschylus and Sophocles from its consequences.

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At Rome, where the artistic sensibilities of the people were blunt and coarse, for the most part, decoration, as might be expected, more rapidly surpassed its limits, and the drama degenerated into pantomime. After Roscius and Esopus quitted the stage, we find no records of either comic or tragic actors of eminence. In less than one generation these excellent artists were ceeded by Bathyllus and Pylades, who, surrounded by crowded groupes

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and dazzling draperies, danced the parts of Hercules and Agamemnon to thunders of applause.

In the days when the drama attempted less and succeeded better, elocution was a regular branch of an actor's education. It may be so still; but we rarely discover traces of the art of speaking being taught, or at least acquired, to any purpose. Except, indeed, at the only two theatres where Shakspeare is still represented, elocution, for any ends to be answered, may as well drop into the rank of artes deperditæ. But even at what may be termed our only classical theatres, we miss the careful modulation of voice and rhythm which we can remember as generally prevailing at CoventGarden under the Kemble dynasty. To it has succeeded, where any system at ail is followed, an inharmonious mode of declamation which causes prose to be undistinguishable from verse, and even prose itself to forego its proper cadences and proportions. It is called, we believe, a more natural manner of speaking. But do those who term it so weigh well their own designation? When men and women in ordinary life and upon ordinary topics speak in harmonious numbers, it will be right for the actor to hold the mirror up to life, and imitate them. But as men and women do not, and never will speak in the melodious cadences of heroic verse, the actor has no right to consider their common speech as his rule for enunciating the lofty and passionate thoughts of Hamlet and Macbeth. His strain is cast in a loftier mood, and while keeping clear from vulgar rant and bombast, should be resonant of the harmonies with which he is entrusted. It requires, as it has been well said, a man of genius to introduce and make current a popular fallacy. Mr. Macready was unquestionably a man of genius, and as unquestionably, in our judgment, inoculated his profession with a style of elocution which sets poetry, music, and nature alike at defiance.

We have been oftentimes puzzled to account for the principles upon which this much-admired actor founded his theory and practice of enunciation. For that it was a theory, however erroneous and per

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verse, must be obvious to all who, like ourselves, remember the earlier and better representations of that gentleman. His voice was then full, free, and undisturbed by affectation; the sentiments or passions to which he gave utterance seemed in those days to spring from genuine emotions of his heart: the rhythm of verse was distinctly marked: the cadence and the meaning of prose were carefully conveyed. Whereas in his latter years he adopted a manner of which the only merit was distinctness of utterance. To grace, to verisimilitude, or to harmony it made no pretensions; indeed, it seemed carefully to shun these qualities as so many needless excrescences of declamation. Nor was he content with practising his theory himself; his brother actors were sedulously trained in the school, and many of them very effectively copied their master. Unfortunately, his disciples are yet extant, and we must await another generation of actors before this heresy of the tongue shall have run out its sands.

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One of the most disheartening circumstances of the modern drama to all parties really interested in its conservation as a rational entertainment is, the present fashion for parodies of sterling plays. We know not whether the manager, the actor, or the public at large be the greater sufferer by this epidemic nuisance. Of the authors of such monstrosities we cannot write with sufficient contempt; the most successful, and at the same time, the most hideous of parodists are monkeys, and we rate no higher the preposterous blockheads who convert into mirth and laughter the solemn and serious scenes of Shakspeare. To a manager, who entertains higher notions of his art and position than that of a mere snare or trap-fall for audiences, they are directly injurious; for, on the one hand, they divert from his house the just remuneration of his pains and outlay, and on the other, they operate as temptations to him to forego his efforts in the right path, and to become a mere caterer for one of the vulgarest of tastes-a taste for the low and ludicrous. The right place for managers who so cater for the

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public is Greenwich Fair. To the actors, again, burlesque is baneful, inasmuch as it accustoms them to regard under a distorted aspect the very highest matters of their art. Above all, it is prejudicial to the public. Let us imagine, for a moment, the effect of a gallery of caricatures, either in painting or sculpture, or rather the indignation which such an affront to the national judgment would, it is to be hoped, elicit. Yet what would be justly resented in the case of the other arts, is as unjustly applauded and caressed in scenic representations. An Aristophanic sketch, such as Mr. Planché or Mr. Tom Taylor provide for the Saturnalia of Christmas is indeed legitimate. It shoots folly as it flies: is a lively comment upon current absurdities, and frequently speaks wholesome truths in the accents of timely jest. But burlesques, of which it is the formal purpose to convert into laughter what was meant to exalt and purify the soul, are offences against public tastes and morals equally; and that such offences, instead of being promptly silenced, should be applauded and caressed, and that Shakspeare should be especially selected as the butt of these barren witlings, appears to us one of the most decisive symptoms that the Drama, in our generation, is really on the decline.

Our indignation at these foul excrescences of the present stage has led us aside from the main question -namely, whether the drama be truly, as we are so often assured, in a consumptive condition, and whether its revival on any large and liberal scale be no longer practicable. We have enumerated sundry causes adverse to its general prosperitythe dispersion of the actors over a wider area; the partially antagonistic influences of literature in supplying some of the excitement which, at a time when readers were comparatively few, the theatre alone afforded: the rash and often unjust rivalry of managers with each other; and the decay of the provincial schools that formerly fed the metropolitan stage. Under the present system we believe these causes of disadvantage to be irremediable. But is the present the only practicable system, and is it indeed too late to devise or apply

some efficient remedy. Of the three parties concerned in the welfare or rehabilitation of the drama, one-the actor himself is nearly powerless, and must be put nearly aside. By his very articles of agreement he must do the manager's bidding, and to do that bidding effectually as well for his employer as for his own reputation, he must humour the fancies of the public. The possible cure of the alleged evils, therefore, rests with the managers and their audiences, and we are of opinion that some terms of accommodation may be discovered for their common and respective advantage.

Numerically considered, we do not think that the race of play-goers is diminished. This indeed is a subject for statistics. Relatively to certain classes, their number has undoubtedly declined, since, although we comfortably plume ourselves upon possessing the most magnificent dramatic poetry in the world, we rather inconsistently eschew its representation, and flock to entertainments imperfectly understood by two-thirds of the spectators. Does any reasonable being affect to think that the opera is much more than a splendid pantomime to at least half its frequenters, or that Rachel and Devrient are verily and indeed appreciated by all who applaud them, and at the same time invidiously contrast them with English actors? To answer these questions affirmatively demands faith bigger than a grain of mustard seed, and more than, we confess, we individually own to having. Yet from the practice of the Opera House and the St. James's Theatre, we discern some hopes of recovery for our own. The hours observed by these establishments are better adapted to the usages of society; the performances are not overloaded by quantity; the actors are not tasked and jaded beyond their strength. Our proposal has not indeed novelty to recommend it; the novelty would consist in a fair trial whether a later hour for commencing performances, a more strict adhesion to separate classes of performance at different theatres, and, above all, a shorter period of detention in a heated atmosphere, might not be found more attractive to the public and more

remunerative to the manager. Three hours of recreation may be pleasant, or at least may well be endured. By eight o'clock in the evening dinner might be comfortably concluded, and even the process of digestion as comfortably commenced. By eleven o'clock both eye and ear would be satiated with seeing and hearing, and some appetite left for a future gratification of those senses. The cost and cares of the manager would be lessened by twelve hours in each week-no inconsiderable relief, one would think, in the course of a year while the actor by such curtailment would also be less physically wearied, and ac. quire leisure for a maturer study and elaboration of his charactersAs all previous plans, according to the chroniclers of the stage, have failed in securing any long course of dramatic prosperity, it would be running no great risk to make one experiment more an experiment which, whatever its demerits or disadvantages, would have at least this recommendation, that by shortening the time it would abridge the sufferings of all the parties concerned.

Dramatic authors, brazened, we suppose, by custom, make no scruple, now-a-days, of avowing their debts to their French originals, and even seem to take a certain degree of pride in publishing their importations from the opposite shore. We find no fault with the practice, provided always that our home-born authors are really as impotent as they make themselves out to be, since it is better to borrow than to be quite penniless. This, however, is a matter on which they, not we, are the best judges. Meanwhile habemus confitentes reos, and live in an age of adaptation. We incline to think, however, that our actors might, in some respects, and with general advantage to themselves, take a leaf now and then from their authors' books, and import a few hints from their foreign brethren. From the French comedians they might learn that the art of acting is not a mere outline, but a careful filling-up of character; and from the Germans, they might copy a conscientious earnestness in presenting their author's sense in appropriate

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artistic forms. In these respects, more than in any actual superiority of gifts, external or internal, consist, in our opinion, the real advantages of foreign artists above our own. And, in confirmation of our opinion, we would cite the example of that excellent performer, Mr. Alfred Wigan, who renders even trivial parts important and instructive, by his careful manipulation of all their details.

We do not, however, belong to that comfortless race of beings, whose delight is to travel from Danto Beersheia, and to cry, All is barren: neither would we invidiously refer to an exotic stage alone for all that is excellent in dramatic art, and to our own merely to find fault. Could our performers be more efficiently concentrated than they are, our managers be induced to aim at the discipline of their companies, rather than at the novelty or variety of their productions, and the public be led to regard the stage itself as one among the schools of art, we should not despair of the English Drama becoming once more an amusement of the more refined classes of society, even as it was when Ministers

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of State complimented Booth from the side-boxes, or the circles at Holland House assisted at the performances of Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. We have tendered these imperfect suggestions with an earnest wish that the theatre may one day be restored to the position it once occupied among the pleasures of refined and instructed persons, instead of being, as it now too commonly is, regarded as a trivial or a dull employment of an evening. The nation which boasts of Shakspeare and his great contemporaries, and which produced the family of the Kembles, should continue to boast of its stage. But in order to become a subject of legitimate pride, the stage itself must retrace many a long and heedless step in the path of error, and by assuming to itself a vocation to guide rather than follow the caprices of the public, regain the grounds at least' of self-respect, before it can re-acquire its true position among the arts which minister to the instruction as well as to the amusement of an age. As matters are now, the scene-painter and the upholsterer have become our Bettertons and Garricks.

HAD