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acting of Mr. Bernard Gould, whose dual career as draughtsman and as actor is an attractive one to follow. Whenever I see him act I think he ought to be only an actor, but when I see his pencilwork I think he should be faithful to that branch of art. Can he succeed for long in being really good in both?

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It is difficult to write about "L'Enfant Prodigue" without drifting into the dangerous vein of rhapsody. Not for long enough has a London audience been afforded the chance of seeing anything so exquisitely pretty, so tender, so delicately simple as this pantomime of poor Pierrot's passion, and crime, and shame, and redemption. To a London audience, of course, the whole thing is absolutely novel. To Paris Pierrot is a familiar figure. That white face crowned with its close-fitting black skull-cap, that body clothed in the white garments of tradition, has aroused the laughter or entreated the tears of generation after generation of Parisians. From whatever stock that Pierrot is descended, from whatever succession of the fantastic figures of the Italian Comedy of Masks his gradual evolution may be traced, Pierrot as Paris now knows him is a nationalised French subject; the freedom of the city of Paris is his; he is more Parisian than the Parisians themselves. But since his stay in France Pierrot has undergone further transformations. The Pierrot of to-day is not the Pierrot of yesterday, or of the day before yesterday. A whole chain of metamorphoses lies between the Pierrot of Debureau, the idol of the old Funambules, and the Pierrot of Mademoiselle Jane May. In the fragile, delicate, fanciful creature she plays so exquisitely, a creature whose very crimes seem but the whimsies of some spoilt, enchanting child, there is little of the old broadly comic, audacious, grotesque Pierrot of the Funambules.

Over in America the unconquerable energy of Mr. Augustin Daly has put "L'Enfant Prodigue" upon the New York stage with Miss Ada Rehan in the part of Pierrot. It is to be hoped that when Mr. Daly comes to London this year he will give us the opportunity of seeing this great actress in a part so new to her genius. It will be difficult to see Miss Rehan in pantomime without feeling regret for the enforced silence of that enchanting voice, the sound of which always recalls those lovely lines of Beaumont and Fletcher

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I did hear you speak

Far above singing.

But it has always been my belief that there is no triumph in the field of dramatic art which Miss Rehan may not hope to attain; and I no doubt that her Pierrot will be as marvellous in its way as her also Table Talk," p. 540.

Catherine and her Rosalind. Did not Garrick play Harlequin, and play it well? Mr. Augustin Daly has sent me a copy of the beautiful record of Miss Rehan's dramatic career which he has had privately printed—a fascinating volume-quorum pars minima sum—crowded with illustrations of the great American--I beg pardon, I really should say the great Irish-actress in all her most famous creations. But the volume does not come down to the days of "L'Enfant Prodigue," and we are for the present left to conjecture for ourselves how Miss Ada Rehan looks in the chalked face, the black skull-cap, and the snowy garb of the latest descendant of the Comedy of Masks. Delightful, of course: "I'll take my oath of that," as the man says in "The School for Scandal."

No wonder that Madame Marie Laurent, in her admirable addresses on the actor's art to the Théâtre d'Application, declared that she had been no less than five times to the "L'Enfant Prodigue," and alluded to another eminent dramatic artist who had been still oftener. The charm it exercised over Paris it will certainly exercise over London. Those who go once will want to go again and again. Certain of the critics have treated it chiefly as a musical piece; that I cannot do. The music is ingenious, excellently woven, dexterously applicable, delightful, what you will, but it is the acting which is the point, the Pantomime's the thing. "L'Enfant Prodigue" is, of course, drama reduced to its crudest form; the story is simplicity itself, and under the conditions it has to be developed, not merely by acting with the words left out, but by the aid of a number of gestures as conventional, as artificial, and as arbitrary as the famous Sign Language of the American Red Indian. That does not matter; the symbolism is intelligible to anyone; a child could follow it. Not that "L'Enfant Prodigue" is at all a play for children. Parents must not be seduced by the familiar term Pantomime into imagining that it is a story for small people. It is far too fin de siècle for the nursery. Pierrot is as much a mad, sad, glad, bad brother as François Villon, and his thefts and passions are not for little eyes. You might as well take children to see Ghosts."

Certainly no children were present at Mr. Grein's production of "Ghosts" at the Royalty Theatre, converted for the nonce into the habitation of the Independent Theatre. But there were a great number of men and of women present holding opinions upon Ibsen wide as the poles asunder, and the result of Mr. Grein's venture has been a revival of the Ibsen war, fiercer, hotter, more acrimonious than Mr. William Archer has made an amusing collection of the angry epithets, the offensive adjectives, the condemnatory phrases

ever.

hurled at Ibsen in consequence of the "Ghosts" representation. On the other hand, certain champions of the Norwegian dramatist have run fair and square a-tilt at the hostile critics, and have shown themselves to be in no sense behindhand in their use of the vocabulary of attack. For my own part, I am somewhat amazed and somewhat amused at all this heat, this passion, this sound and fury. Cannot a man admire Ibsen and find "Ghosts" interesting without being set down as unclean? Cannot a man dislike Ibsen and find "Ghosts" repellent without being denounced as a nincompoop? I think "Ghosts" a very powerful play; I was very glad indeed to see it acted-once; but I can understand perfectly well that others may not think as I do. What I cannot understand, is the way in which some writers rave against Ibsen as if he had committed some grave sin against the State; writers who in the same breath declare him to be utterly worthless, unimportant, and obscure, and yet at the same time a menace to morality, and a disgrace to art. Why should Ibsen be discussed in this vaporous, rumbustious fashion, unworthy of articulate men? Where we differ let us differ decently, like courtly swordsmen. Men can write temperately against Ibsen, for Mr. Andrew Lang has done so ; men can write temperately in favour of Ibsen-at least, I trust so. Mr. Lang called nobody any names. He does not like Ibsen, and he said so in a very entertaining letter to the New York Sun, if I remember rightly. Mr. Archer does like Ibsen, but he does not call his opponents hard names. On this point I am of Mr. Archer's opinion, and yet I hold him to be a grave offender against light, for he cannot read Alexandre Dumas the Elder, and from the bottom of my heart I think the man is more to be pitied who cannot admire Dumas than the man who cannot admire Ibsen. I yield to no one in my admiration for the Norwe gian dramatist, and I do not in the least feel angry because Mr. Archer does not like Dumas. Every man to his taste, though personally, if I had to choose, I would rather like D'Artagnan and Chicot than Nils Lykke or Sigurd hin Staerke. I only mention this matter to feather my arrow of entreaty for a larger tolerance. Let us admit that a man may like Ibsen or not like Ibsen, like Dumas or not like Dumas, and yet remain a man and a brother.

JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY.

THE

THE CANAL.

HE smooth canal, where level meads extend, Lies with the sunlight glittering on its breast; So softly on their way its waters wend

They hardly stir the rushes from their rest.
The towing-path, a narrow strip of grey,

Follows one curving bank; its further bound
A hedge of tangled rose and hawthorn-spray;
Beyond, a sweep of undulating ground.
And past the pastures, where the placid herds
In undisturbed contentment graze or lie,
A wood-a very paradise for birds-

Unfolds its fluttering pennons to the sky.

No cumbrous locks with clamorous sluices near,-
Though far away, amid surrounding green,
Dark gates and beams loom when the days are clear-
Break on the charm of that enthralling scene.

A foot-bridge high above the current flung,

Of wood-work still unstripped of bark, and slight,
Looks like a forest-branch but newly swung
For sylphs to watch the waters from its height.
The loiterer there, with musing eye, receives
A picture sweet as cloud-land ever spread,
Or wondering boyhood, half in doubt, believes
From pastoral legends of an age long dead.
And should, perchance, a laden barge draw near,
The silent boatman stationed at the helm,
The slow horse, and the gliding hull, appear
Part of some pageant in that fairy realm.

The sun himself there sheds a chastened ray,
The sedges whisper of enduring peace,
The roving zephyr hums a drowsier lay,

The woodland carols hover round, and cease.

Then silence, or the lull of blending songs

From winds and waters, rustling leaves and reeds; From sylvan minstrels, and the gentler throngs

That chant the measures of our dreams; succeeds.

Till care of earthly things, the lapse of time,
The very pulse of being, in suspense ;
The soul alone is conscious, with sublime
Serenity enfolding every sense.

HENRY ROSE.

TABLE TALK.

FRENCHWOMEN OF THE LAST CENTURY.

HE part taken by Frenchwomen in politics, in letters, and in

THE

society is far more active than that of Englishwomen. In letters we pay France no special deference. George Eliot runs a good second to Georges Sand, and Mrs. Browning leads all poetesses since Sappho. In women of action, however, we are wholly inferior. We can boast, it is true,

That sweet saint who sat by Russell's side;

but to the three leading personages in Mr. Austin Dobson's characteristically delightful "Four Frenchwomen " we have no parallel. Political struggle has been more peaceful in England. A nation that has no Marat needs not to breed a Charlotte Corday, and in the absence of a Reign of Terror men do not martyrise a Mdme. Roland and a Princesse de Lamballe. Of this triad of female worthies, who ennoble the drama-sordid in some respects, if sublime in others—of the French Revolution, Mr. Dobson gives an account that exercises a strongly emotional effect upon the reader. The fourth heroine is a woman of a different stamp. To Madame de Genlis a parallel is easily supplied. I venture to suggest the famous Duchess of NewcastleMad Meg of Newcastle, as, with shocking disregard of her birth, state, beauty, and talents, contemporary wags did not hesitate to call her. More than one literary Englishwoman-notably Mrs. Inchbald, once the sweetest and sunniest of women-is far more interesting than Madame de Genlis.

Is

ON PUBLIC SPEAKING.

S there an exception to the rule that the great oratorical effects are the result of arduous study? Lord Dufferin, who is an authority, has recently said that great speeches, as a rule, are committed to paper, and to a great extent acquired by heart. That this was so in ancient times will not be disputed. Nobody can conceive the Catiline orations of Cicero, with their admirably balanced phrase and their exquisite combination of words, to be other than the product 1 Chatto & Windus,

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