love with the actor's life, and felt secret yearnings to quit the university, and throw himself upon the world in quest of adventure-especially in quest of a Marianne, a Philina, and a Mignon! He had not as yet dared to disobey his father's strict commands-he had never ventured inside a theatre; but he had imbibed the dangerous poison-he had learned to look upon an actor's life as a life of poetry. The seed was sown!

About this time my cousin William went to the Leipsic university, and became the fellow-student and companion of Franz. From him I learned most of these details. William was by no means a model of select virtue in fact, was what, in the jargon of the day, is called "rather a fast man; and he led Franz into many a debauch which would have driven Schoenlein wild, had he known it; but he could not persuade him to go to the theatre.

Franz was ready enough at a duel, and had spoiled the beauty of some half-dozen faces by the dexterous sword-cut which draws a line over the nose, and lays open the cheek. He was ready enough, too, with his beer-few youths of his age had more promising talents that way: and as to patriotic songs, energetically demanding of the universe where the German's fatherland might be, or the probability of tyrants long crushing free hearts beneath their heels, together with frantic calls upon the sword, responded to by the clatter of beer-jugs in these Franz was distinguished.

But

At last he did brush away his scruples, and accompanied William to the theatre. They played Schiller's Don Carlos. Conceive his rapture at this first taste of the long-coveted forbidden fruit! He thought the Marquis of Posa a demigod. words cannot express his adoration of the Princess Eboli, that night played by Madame Clara Kritisch. She was to him the "vision of loveliness and light," which an actress always is to an impassioned youth, the first time he sees one. Her large voluptuous eyes, her open brow, her delicate nostrils, her full and not ungraceful figure, together with the dazzling beauty of her (theatrical)

complexion, made a powerful impression on him. Her acting seemed to him the acting of an angel.

He left the theatre madly in love with her.

We all know what it is to be in love with an actress. We have all of us, in the halcyon days of boyhood, offered up the incense of our young hearts to some painted, plain, conventional, and perfectly stupid actress, round whose head we have thrown the halo and the splendour of our imaginations. We have had our Juliets, our Desdemonas, our Imogens, our Rosalinds, our Violas, our Cordelias, who, though in the fleshand-blood reality they were good, honest, middle-aged women, mothers of families or disreputable demireps, to us were impersonations of the ideal

fairy visions, to whom we have written verses, whose portraits have hung over our beds!

Therefore, having known a touch of this "exquisite fooling," we can sympathise with Franz. Never having seen an actress before, any hag painted for the heroine of the night would have charmed him. But Clara was by no means a hag: in fact, his passion was excusable, for on the stage she was charming.

Franz went again and again, only to return home more in love than before. He fancied she had remarked him in the pit; he fancied the smile on her ruddy lips was a smile of encouragement addressed to him. He wrote her a burning love-letter, which she quietly burned. He waited impatiently for an answer, and went to the theatre expecting to read it in her looks. He could read nothing there but her loveliness.

He wrote again; he wrote daily. He sent her quires of verses, and reams of "transcripts of his heart," in the form of letters. He lived a blissful life of intense emotion. Fatherland was forgotten; the sword was no longer called upon; all tyrants were merged in the cruel one whom he adored.

At length he gained admittance behind the scenes; nay, more--he was introduced to Clara.

Alas! the shock his sense of loveliness received, when he beheld before him the fat, rouged, spangled woman,

whom he had regarded as the incarnation of beauty! Her complexionwas this its red and white? were its roses and lilies gathered by the hare's foot and the powder-puff?

He could not speak; the springs of his eloquence were frozen; the delicate compliments he had so laboriously prepared, faded away in an unmeaning stammer. The first illusion of his life was gone.

Perhaps there is nothing more striking to a young man than his first experience of the stage behind the scenes. That which, seen from the boxes, looks health and beauty, behind the scenes is weariness and paint; that which in the house is poetic, behind the scenes is horrible mechanism. What scene-painting is when looked at closely, that are actresses seen in the green-room.

Franz was staggered, but not cured. He could not divest his heart of her image, and began to see her again as he had always seen her. Growing accustomed to the reality, he again beheld it in its ideal light; and as on the stage Clara was always enchanting, she carried with her some of the en chantment when she left it. Poor fellow! how patiently he stood there, hungering for the merest word-the simplest look! He saw others--a privileged few-speaking to her boldly; jesting with her; admiring her; giving their opinions respecting her costume, as if she were an ordinary woman, while he could only stammer out some meaningless remark. What would he have given to feel himself at ease with her, to be familiar, so that he might be seen to advantage!

At last he thought of a plan for making himself better known to her. He wrote a play, in which the heroine was destined for her; and as hers was the only character in the piece which was effective, she pronounced it the finest thing which had been written since Schiller. Franz was in ecstasies. She read the play herself to the manager, and exerted all her eloquence in its behalf. But the manager saw well enough her motive,-knew that she was so delighted with the play merely because her part was the important one, and declined to produce it. The play gained its author's end however. It had established him among Clara's friends. She began to

notice his love for her, began to recognise its seriousness. She knew how to distinguish between the real homage of a heart, and the lip-homage which others offered her.

There is something inexpressibly charming in knowing yourself possessed of a heart's first love; and women-especially those who have passed the first flush of youth-are more gratified by the love of a boy, than by that of twenty men. A boy's love has something in it so intense, so absorbing, so self-forgetting! It is love, and love only, unmixed with any thoughts of responsibilities; looking forward to no future, reflected by no past. There is a bloom on first love. Its very awkwardness is better than grace; its silence or imperfect stammerings more eloquent than eloquence; there is a mute appeal in its eyes, which is worth all the protestations in the world.

Clara, who had been accustomed to the admiration of roués, felt the exquisite charm of this boy's love. In a few weeks he became her acknowledged lover; and excited no little envy among the habitués of the theatre, who could not for the life of them comprehend "what the devil she could see in that bumpkin."

But if boys love intensely, they love like tyrants, and Clara was made a slave. Jealous of every one who approached her, he forced her to give up all her friends; she gave way to every caprice; she began to idolise him.

This connexion with an actress, as may easily be foreseen, led to Franz's adopting the profession of the stage. Clara taught him in a few months that which ordinary actors take years to acquire; but this was owing to his hereditary dramatic talent more than to her instruction. His appearance on the stage, which would, he knew, profoundly hurt his father, was not the mere theatrical ambition which possesses most young men: it was stern necessity; it was the only profession open to him, for he had married Clara!

Yes! he, the boy of one-and-twenty, had married a woman of five-andthirty! It was a mad act-the recklessness or delirium of a boy but it was an act which has too many precedents for us to wonder at it. He had by this act separated him

self, he feared, from his father for ever. His only hope of pardon was, as he fondly thought, dramatic success. Could his father but see him successfully following in his footsteps, he would surely forgive him. It was a proud moment that boy's triumphant debut; proud because he had succeeded, proud because his pardon was purchased-as he thought!

Franz had only played a few weeks, and Germany was ringing with his praises. So great was his success,

that when a few critics and actors whose judgments were all traditional, objected that he could not be a good actor because he had not gradually worked his way upwards, they were speedily silenced by the incontestible fact that he was a great actor. A brilliant engagement had been offered him at Berlin; and he was about to appear on the same stage with his father, before that father had the faintest suspicion of his son's ever having entered a theatre.

The curtain fell. Franz had reappeared to receive the enthusiastic homage of the audience, and was now in his room undressing, when the door opened, and his father stood before him.

Instead of rushing into his arms, Franz stood confused, blushing, trembling. The haggard sternness of his father's face told but too plainly with what feelings he was regarded.

It was a moment of cruel silence.

The position was humiliating. With his clothes scattered about the room; with the paint still unwashed from his face; with his room in disorder; swords, playbills, theatrical dresses, a wig, a rouge-pot, and washing-stand, lying about; himself in the undignified attitude of drawing on his stockings;-all combined to present the miserable and prosaic side of his profession to the angry glance of an incensed parent.

"So!" said the old man, "these are your theological studies! This is the end of all my care! you have disobeyed me. You have destroyed all my hopes, and gone upon the stage, for which you well know my detestation. I find you thus!"

Franz could make no answer. "While I fondly believed you still at the university, pursuing an honourable career-a career useful to mankind and honourable to yourself you were like a runaway apprentice taking to this odious life."

"But, sir,-I have succeeded!" "So much the worse!" "Is not that my excuse? "No; it is your condemnation." "Surely, father, it proves that I have chosen right. It proves I have a vocation for the stage?"

"It only proves your disobedience. Vocation, indeed! Any man has a vocation for the stage: any man who has brains, and is not physically too weak to utter the thoughts of an author. Vocation! You might as well tell me you had a vocation for the highway-and if you had robbed a man, by placing a pistol to his head, and bidding him stand and deliver, that your success was your excuse!

"Is it not enough," pursued Schoenlein, after a pause, "that there should be one actor in the family: one whose necessities have driven him on the stage, and who, once there, is forced to remain there?"

"But I, for my part, see nothing reprehensible in the life of an actor." "I do."

Franz saw there was no appeal from such a decision, so he dressed himself

in silence.

He was hurt, angry. He expected that his father would have been delighted with his performance, would have rejoiced in his success. To be treated like a schoolboy, to hear such tones and see such looks, irritated him.

"Come with me to my hotel," said Schoenlein, as Franz completed his dressing.

They had not taken many steps before a stout middle-aged woman, enveloped in a fur cloak, said to Franz:

"Lieber Franz, the carriage is waiting."

Schoenlein did not hear the whispered reply, but strode hastily onwards his son followed.

"Who was that," he inquired, as they came out into the street, "who called you Lieber Franz?"

"It is your father who speaks. Remember he is your best friend; and he earnestly implores you to quit a career which even success can only make a gilded disgrace. Will you promise me this?"

He felt very uncomfortable, and knew not what answer to make.

"You are young," pursued his father; "young and hopeful. You look as yet only to the bright side of life, and see only the pleasures of the stage. You think it glorious to be applauded, to have your name in the mouths of men, your portrait in shop windows. In a little while all this applause will pall upon your ear; all these portraits will look like so many signs of your disgrace, and caricatures of yourself. The charm will pass away, and you will feel yourself to be a mountebank, painted to amuse a gaping crowd! Then the wear and tear of the profession, its thousand petty irritations and miserable anxieties, will be as stings of wretchedness, and you will curse the day you first trod upon a stage.

"Look at me!" he said, suddenly pausing in the angry walk which he was taking up and down the room. "Have I not been successful? have I not been flattered, envied ? have I not known what it is to be a great tragedian, to dictate terms to managers, to sway audiences? Have I not known all this? And yet, since you can remember me, have you ever seen me happy? Is not my life an example? Does not my whole life cry out to you, Beware! Will you not profit by the bitter lessons of my experience?"

"But, my dear father, you forget one thing you have always looked upon the profession with disgust. do not."

"You will learn to do so."

I

"I cannot accept such a sacrifice." "It is none. I would sacrifice every thing rather than see you on the stage! Besides, in another year or two you may make a rich marriage. I have already agreed with our old friend Schmidt, that you should be united to his daughter Bertha, and her dowry will be very large."

A deep, deep blush overspread Franz's face, which was succeeded by a deathlike paleness, as his father mentioned marriage.

"How can I ever break my marriage to him!" was his mental exclamation.

"Will you promise me?"

"I cannot. Believe me, it distresses me thus to disobey you, but I cannot quit the stage."

"I have failed to convince you then? You misapprehend my motives. You think, perhaps"- and here an affected laugh of irony gave tenfold force to the words-"that I am jealous of you?"

"Oh, father!" exclaimed Franz.

But his father's words and tone had, as in a flash of light, suddenly revealed the real feeling in his heart he was jealous, and his son perceived it.

Do not, however, suppose that the old man was aware of this feeling; he would have shuddered at the accusation. Blinding himself with all sorts of sophistications, he attributed his horror at Franz's adoption of the stage to his very sincere disgust to that profession; and because he really did in his own person feel an actor's life was disgraceful, even sinful, he fancied his

objection to Franz's being an actor was wholly derived from that feeling. But in the depths of his heart he was horribly jealous. He had learned to hate Franz as a rival, before he knew him to be his son. Critics had maddened him by their comparisons. Franz had been pointed out as the actor who was to eclipse him. And now that he found Franz was his son, instead of rejoicing in his success, instead of feeling proud that at any rate his rival was his son, and that the genius which dethroned him was derived from himself-instead of the consolation which another father would have received, he was assailed by the bitterest thoughts at the idea of his son being an actor! He was incensed at such disobedience, at such violation of all his wishes; and attributed to his anger all he really felt of jealousy.

:

There is something so painful in the idea of a father being jealous of his son, that many will be tempted to pronounce it impossible. Rare it fortunately is, but not impossible. Who has not known women jealous of their daughters women preserving their beauty, and followed by homage, till their girls are old enough to dispute and bear away the palm from them? If this is not uncommon-and more than one instance must occur within every reader's experience-what is to prevent the same principle applying in a man's case? You have only to imagine the vanity pampered by flattery into an unhealthy condition, and then bring in a rival-no matter whom --and the thing is done. Either the father's vanity will be caressed by the reflection of the child's success, (and this, happily, is the commoner case,) or it will be irritated at the child's interference with its claims.

In Schoenlein's case must be added the strange but intense dislike with which he regarded the profession of an actor. Had there been no rivalry in the case, had Franz been only a tolerable actor, he would still have been excessively irritated. But for his son to be an actor, and for the public to prefer him as an actor to his father-this was agonising!

He grew eloquent in his exhortations. Finding it was in vain to make Franz share his religious opinions, he

endeavoured to dissuade him by painting all the dangers of the professionits pangs, its weariness, its disappointments-painted the disagreeable_ordeal he himself had been forced to undergo; and speaking, as he thought, to accomplish his son's welfare, he was eloquent.

This much is to be said for fathers who object to their sons following their own careers: the struggles by which they have won their way, the sorrows which have been forced upon them, the dangers they have escaped-these are all so vividly present to their minds, that they believe them inseparable from the career. Who shall say that another will escape these perils? All the delight, all the rapture of hope and of success are forgotten, or else weigh but as a feather in the scale against these perils. A father says:

-

"It is true I escaped; but I was fortunate. Besides, I had genius, — I had rectitude,—I had strength of will. My poor boy, (and fathers are apt to look with a sort of compassion on their children: is it because the children have, from infancy upwards, looked to them for pity and protection?)-— my poor boy will not be able to buffet with the world as I did! He will be led away by temptations; he will succumb beneath adversity!"

In proportion to the precariousness of the profession is the reluctance of the parent. Poets never wish their sons to be poets; certainly not to trust to poetry for their livelihood. Nor do artists desire their sons to be artists. Actors almost universally shudder at the idea of their children becoming actors.

So that Schoenlein's remonstrances would have been vehement, even had he not been tormented with jealousy But, from the moment Franz perceived the real state of his father's mind, all compunction vanished. No arguments could have made him quit the stage; but now he felt his father's arguments to be insults.

"I hope you do not misunderstand me," said the old man. "You must know me well enough to believe that no one would more rejoice in your success-that to no one should I be so proud to transmit my laurel crown, if it were not lined with iron, which brands the forehead with disgrace. I