hearsal is demanded. The days have long passed when every actor had a repertory of twenty parts, in any one of which he was ready to appear at an hour's notice. Each actor in our time only plays about one part a year, is drilled by machinery, and goes on till the springs run down, like a piece of Swiss clockwork.

In the selection of his plays, or rather authors, his choice will be much more limited. If he shows any hesitation, it cannot arise from the variety of material at his disposal. He will find that there are fifty theatres, more or less, in London, and only about three dramatic authors. He will treat these gentlemen with great respect, and wait his turn to be served, like a duchess at a Civil Service store. He will buy his dramatic pigs in a poke, and pay what is asked without a murmur. Occasionally he will get a piece from a French source, which he will either steal or pay for in a prodigal manner; and, having secured it, he will place it in the hands of one of the two recognised

English adapters. If he spends much money in placing it on the stage, he will be told that he is a fool and an upholsterer; and if he starves it in the production, he will be told that he is a shortsighted niggard. If he flies to the old drama as a refuge, he will have to plunge into Shakespeare and legitimacy, as there are not more than three comedies out of a thousand, from the time of Queen Elizabeth to that of Queen Victoria, that are worth the trouble of acting. Being in for theatrical management, however, he will do his best according to his lights, and at the end of a few years he will find that he has either lost ten thousand pounds by hard work, or made double that sum by a series of inexplicable flukes. He may probably hold his peace in the market-place; but in the privacy of his study he will admit that no particular training in literature and art is necessary for the good government of a theatre, but precisely those qualities that make a successful cheesemonger.

THE FIRST THEATRE IN EUROPE.

FEW weeks ago I was staying in
Paris for a short time, and doing

as most English people do in that

gay but limited city. I was eating twice as much food as I could easily digest; buying a lot of English articles (increased in price by French profits and prohibitive duties) under the fond belief that they were Parisian specialities; spending my days in a promenade that was bounded at one end by the Grand Hôtel, and at the other end by the Restaurant Brébant; and dividing my nights amongst dramatic entertainments that I had been taught to believe were far superior to anything of the kind in my own benighted

country. One morning, while I was eating a second breakfast, which was equal to three English lunches and nearly equal to two English dinners, a friend asked me if I had ever been inside the sacred walls of the Théâtre Français. I was obliged to admit that I had never had that refined pleasure. Of course I was immediately asked why. I replied, because I had a constitutional aversion to subsidised theatres and academies of all kinds; that I believed more in free-trade than I did in Government patronage of art; and that I had almost a loathing for the socalled French classical drama. I admired Molière, as far as I understood him; but I thought that he was hardly able to carry Corneille and Racine on his back; while as to Voltaire, I doubted whether even the Frenchman was living who could sit patiently through one of his very prosy dramas. friend immediately told me that I was labouring under a delusion; that the Théâtre Français was no longer exclusively the home of the so-called French classical drama; that

My

its doors had been thrown open, if not very wide, to the living dramatic authors of France, although he admitted that it had taken nearly a century of persistent agitation to obtain this desirable concession. He moreover told me that if I picked my night I might drop upon a play as popular and bad as any ever produced at the Vaudeville or Gymnase Theatres, and he kindly offered to act as my guide, instructor, and friend on the night of my proposed visit. I could scarcely refuse so polite an offer from a distinguished Parisian, and I selected the night of the day on which this conversation took place. We looked at the programme, and the play happened to be L'Étrangère.

About half-past seven o'clock, after an unusually light dinner, for I felt that some little physical training was necessary on this important occasion, I was taken down to the stage-door of the first theatre in Europe,' as it is often called, and introduced to a mutual friend, a distinguished member of the Comédie Française. I was received