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intimidation prevailed, including that of Orleans, which was largely Democratic, the majority of Republican votes actually cast was 6,097. The remaining seventeen parishes contained 20,323 registered colored voters and 16,253 white, the former, like those in the forty parishes, being almost exclusively Republican. Judge Black says the majority of votes actually polled by the Democratic party within the State is admitted to have been 7,639. Assuming this to have been so, the Democrats must have succeeded, with 16,253 white voters, in getting a majority, over 20,323 colored, of 13,736. Does he believe this to have been possible, in face of the Republican majority of 6,097 in forty parishes? What, in his opinion, led to such a remarkable conversion to the Democratic faith of the negroes in seventeen parishes? Was it weariness and discontent of carpet-bag rule, or was the result secured by that violence and crime so successfully employed in 1868? But this is not all. Five of these seventeen parishes were especially selected for the employment of these modes of conversion, first, because of their favorable location on and near the borders of Mississippi and Arkansas, and, second, because of the large majority of colored Republicans which they contained. There were within them but 5,134 white registered voters to 13,244 colored, and yet so effective were the intimidation, violence, and murder there employed, that a Democratic majority was secured of 4,495,- equal within 639 of the entire registered Democratic vote. Does not this raise a suspicion, even in the mind of Judge Black, that other causes than disgust of carpet-bag rule produced this result? Does it not look like the fruit of a policy organized for violence, cropping out here and there in murder, until it had filled the land with terror?

If he shall resist presumptions like these, then would he refuse to believe though one should rise from the dead. He is, however, commended to the testimony taken in volumes before the Returning Board and the two Committees. He has said there was no proof of violence in the parish of East Feliciana, which contained a registered colored vote of 2,127, and a registered white vote of 1,737, and where not a Republican vote was cast. Let him, in refutation of this, look at the testimony of many witnesses who, before the Returning Board, swore to scenes of terrible violence, creating general intimidation at the polls throughout that parish on the day of election.

Judge Black has certainly omitted nothing of slander, nothing' of reprobation, nothing of denunciation, of all those who in any manner aided in securing the elevation of Mr. Hayes to the Presidency, which the most violent and reckless of his party can desire. He has constructed with malicious ingenuity a well-compacted series of misstatements, each reposing upon assertions positively made, and all as a rule destitute of any solid foundation. In so doing truths have been so perverted as to become falsehoods, and falsehoods so interwoven with these as to appear like truths. He has even assailed those who at the request of the President went to New Orleans to witness the count of the electoral vote by the Returning Board, after it was known that, at the request of Mr. Tilden, several distinguished Democrats were to attend there for that purpose. Of the Republicans who went there Judge Black with unblushing effrontery declares: "They might have caused a true count of the vote if they had wished it; one word of reprobation from them would have paralyzed the rascality of the Returning Board." And he adds, they “encouraged, aided, and abetted by every means in their power the perpetration of the Great Fraud, and after it was done held it up as a righteous act."

Perhaps after the many exposures already made of the misrepresentations which jostle and crowd each other from the beginning to the end of Judge Black's article, a presumption arises against him such as the common law invokes against one who swears falsely with knowledge. If so, this unfounded charge deliberately made against men who undertook without compensation, at great personal sacrifice, to perform what they and others of both parties deemed a public service, is already answered. They met in presence of the Returning Board, and at its request, eminent Democrats who were present upon a like invitation, and attended daily before it, nothing whatever being done by its members except in presence of the representatives of both political parties, and of their stenographic reporters, from the time the Board organized until its labors closed and its members had retired to deliberate upon the testimony before them. To have interfered with their duties, to have proffered them advice for the purpose of influencing the result of their deliberations, and especially to have reprobated them, as suggested by Judge Black, would have been a gross outrage upon them personally, an insult to their office, and most disrespect

There is no

ful to the State whose supreme organs they were. reason to suppose they failed to exercise a wise and just discretion, and it is quite certain the conclusions they reached have not been in the least shaken or disturbed by the unsupported assertions of Judge Black. When he shall venture beyond the domain of denunciation, and, entering the fair field of inquiry and of argument, shall candidly explore the proofs on which the Board acted, and especially when he shall honestly endeavor to realize that the Electoral Commission was powerless under the Constitution and law to disregard the final will of the States of Louisiana, Florida, and Oregon, he will engage in a task which may open his mind to the truth, leading him to the conclusion that the nation has not been betrayed, and that the Great Fraud of 1876 was but the figment of a disordered imagination.

E. W. STOUGHTON.

ART. II. THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA.

(AN EPISTLE TO C*****S R***E FROM DION BOUCICAULT.)

WHEN you ask me, dear R―, to afford some reason for the decline of the drama which we have witnessed during our time, I feel inclined to reply in the words of the Trojan exile:

"Quanquam animus meminisse horret luctuque refugit,

Incipiam."

It is comforting to reflect that the fine arts, together with every form of literature, in truth, all the staple products of the brain, -have suffered a decline during the last half-century. There is a certain satisfaction in reflecting that the drama has been steadily declining for two thousand years, since Cæsar, deploring the falling off in the Roman stage of his time, when compared with the Greek, stigmatized Terence as a half-bred (demidiatus) Menander. We, dramatists of this age, can therefore hope there is a still lower depth in years to come, when we shall be regarded as men of stature by a pygmy posterity.

The "Spectator," writing in the time of Queen Anne, deplores the degradation of the stage of that period. While criticising the rage for introducing real objects on the scene, whereby the attention of the audience was diverted from serious consideration to silly entertainment, Addison says (I quote in brief)

"Common-sense requires that there shall be nothing in the scenes and machinery which may appear childish or absurd. A little skill in criticism would inform us that shadows and realities ought not to be mixed together in the same piece, and that the scenes which are designed as the representation of nature should be filled with the resemblance and not with the things themselves. If one would represent a wide champaign country filled with herds and flocks, it would be ridiculous to draw the country only upon the scenes and to crowd the several parts of the stage with sheep and oxen. This is joining together inconsistencies, and making the decoration partly real and partly imaginary. As I was walking in the street about a fortnight ago, I saw a fellow carrying a cage full of little birds. Upon asking what he had

upon his shoulder, he told me that he had been buying sparrows for the theatre. 'Sparrows for the theatre! What! are they to be roasted?' 'No, no,' says the other, 'they are to enter towards the end of the first act, and to fly about the stage.' The sparrows were to act the part of singing birds in a grove, but though they flew in sight their music proceeded from a concert of flageolets and bird-calls, which were planted behind the scenes. At the same time it had been proposed to break down a part of the wall of the theatre and surprise the audience with a party of a hundred horse, and there was actually a project of bringing the New River into the house to be employed in waterworks. This project, I have since heard, is postponed till the summer season, when it is thought the coolness that proceeds from fountains and cascades will be more agreeable and refreshing to people of quality. In the mean time, to find out a more agreeable entertainment for the winter season, there will be introduced thunder and lightning, illuminations and fireworks, which the audience may look upon without catching cold, and indeed without danger of being burned, for there are several engines supplied with water and ready to play at a minute's warning in case any such accident should happen."

If this paper were printed in the press of yesterday, not a word would need alteration to render Addison's remarks applicable to the dramatic entertainments of last week in London or in New York.

Goldsmith, writing fifty years later, mourned over the departed greatness of the drama of 1770 as compared with the grandeur of the previous age of Addison.

It

may be that these critics failed to reflect that the drama is the necessary product of the age in which it lives, and of which it is the moral, social, and physical expression. It is divided into two classes. The first may be called the contemporaneous or realistic drama, which is a reflex of the features of the period, where the personages are life-size, the language partakes of their reality, and the incidents are natural. The object of this drama is to produce in the mind of the spectator sympathy with human suffering by effecting a perfect illusion that he is witnessing a destiny towards which the dramatis persona are progressing. The other is the transcendental or unreal drama, where the personages are larger than life-size, their ideas and language more exalted than human conversation, and the incidents more important than we meet with in ordinary life. The object of this drama is to lift the