The anciens agents English Morris Dance

Jt is the observation of an elegant writer that disquisitions concerning the manners and conduct of our species in early times, or indeed at any time, are always curious at least and amusing. An investigation of the subject before us, if completely and successfully performed, would serve to fill up a chasm in the history of our popular antiquities; but this must not be expected. The culpable indifference of historical writers to private manners, and more especially to the recreations and amusements of the common people, has occasioned the difficulties that always attend enquiries of this nature, many of which are involved in impenetrable darkness; whilst others can only receive illustration from detached and scattered facts accompanied by judicious inferences and opinions.

Lazy actors (and most actors are more or less lazy, according to whether they are Englishmen, Frenchmen or Germans,) want the theatre to go on doing the same old thing that it has always done year after year, and are always telling the enthusiasts that what was good enough for John Kemble or Talma or Schroder is good enough for them. They only make use of these names because they know nothing about the men. If they enquired they would find that these were the very men who were the enthusiasts of their times, and that these were the very men that worked to preserve the ancient traditions of the stage, but who were helpless to fight against the stupidity of the lazy actors of their generation.

The passion of love developes itself on the stage In various ways, and every different species of dramatic production has a peculiar kind of Stage Lover. The tragedy lover is addicted to the very inconvenient practice of loving above his station, and he is continually going about asking the woods, the. groves, the valleys, and the hills why he was " lowly born," a question which the said woods, groves, valleys, and hills are not in the habit of answering.

Creation is too complicated for anybody to understand It, (and this is still being proved) but its voice is at least so clear and so simple that nobody can fail to understand what it is saying. You have only got to look around to understand the voice of Nature; but ferret about, dig, enquire, search, put two and two together, compare, and go on inces« santly with the study of creation and you will only get further away from any solution.

So long as people continue to believe that drama can be revealed through psychology, so long the theatre will remain where it has been for the last hundred years. This dependence upon psychology is characteristic of men who have turned their art Into a business. It shows plainly that they realize the importance of quick returns.

Jn the Italian Group we find that with two exceptions—Othello and the Two Gentlemen of Verona —there is nothing In the text of any of them indicative of time other than that of the period at which Shakespere wrote them. In Othello there is a scene laid in Cyprus, which is never acted, consisting of these six lines.

Qne night I ventured to ask him what new work he was producing. "A drama", he replied with visible pride.

The Germans are always interesting and I find myself always thinking and writing about them. I know them a little; their energy is superb, their sense of economy first class; they waste neither time, space nor money; they understand these three things. In one thing only do they forget to use economy and in that thing they run riot, become spendthrifts and are altogether quite unseemly.