Which it seems was receiving a cart-load of coal,
And slipped out of sight in a moment of time,
As demons descend in a stage pantomime.

They carried him home on an improvised bed,
With three splintered ribs and a flaw in his head.
The doctors for weeks made him cry out in pain
With stitching, and probing, and setting again.
But when he recovered quite changed was his mind
Respecting the practice of looking behind.
No more he turns round for a glimpse at a face.
Or to say a last word, as had oft been the case.
Whoever he meets or goes by in the street
To Sturgis is dead till again they shall meet.

And now, gentle reader, these lines are for you Whenever your way through the town you pursue, Remember the tale that in SCRIBNER you read, And let no attraction on earth turn your head. PALMER COx.

1865, and the remark is as true now as it was fourteen years ago, as a study of the Parisian stage during the last summer has abundantly convinced me. Many of the secondary companies there are but little, if any, better than companies of corresponding position here. I certainly saw one performance in Paris as bad as any I ever saw in New York. And the provincial theaters of France are said to be in a deplorable state. In an article describing the incomparable Comédie-Française ("A Company of Actors," SCRIBNER'S for October, 1878), it was pointed out that, owing to the centralization, which is the great curse of France, the capital monopolizes the best actors and gathers them into a few-a very few indeed-strong and select stock companies. The stranger, seeing that these few theaters in Paris give finer and fuller performances of comedy than any theater in London or New York, not unnaturally infers that the whole stage of France is just so much better than the whole stage of England or America. Theatrically speaking, Paris is France; but New York is not the United States. I doubt whether there are better actors in France than in the United States-although Paris presents many more than New York. I doubt whether there are any actors in France who, in their respective lines, are more richly gifted or better trained than Mr. Joseph Jefferson, or Mr. Lester Wallack, or Mr. John McCullough, or Mr. John Gilbert; although, on the other hand, we have no M. Got, no M. Coquelin, no M. Delaunay. But M. Got and M. Coquelin and M. Delaunay are all in one theater, and at times are cast in one play, and have for years been in the habit of playing together; while Mr. McCullough and Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Wallack often play a thousand miles apart. The French are not cursed with the "star" system; they will not tolerate a single planet set in a fading cloud of star-dust. And thus centralization and the habit of having stock companies combine to help Paris to good playing, while the broad extent and well-diffused wealth of our land unite with the star-system to prevent good players from massing together here in New York. This is the reason why we have here no theater equal to the Gymnase or the Vaudeville, not to mention the Comédie-Française. This is the reason, and not any lack of good actors.

It would doubtless be difficult, even if possessed of autocratic power, to gather from all the United States a company better than

the Comédie-Française-better, that is, than the male half of that admirable assemblage of picked comedians; the female half, in spite of several personalities of strange and pungent flavor, is not at all on the same artistic level. It would certainly be impossible, in the United States, to compose, off-hand and at once, a company which should immediately begin to work together as smoothly as the traditions and restraints of two hundred years of existence enable the comedians of the Théâtre-Français to work. But from the theaters of New York, from out of the stock companies of this one city, could readily be chosen a company which, after it should have time to get into working order, would compare not unfavorably with the Odéonthe junior Théâtre-Français-or with any of the better of the court theaters of the smaller German states.

Custom has created, in comedy and drama, certain recognized classes of characters. An actor who devotes himself to one line of parts expects to receive all the parts of that line. In a very full company there would be a pair of "leading men,” a “light comedian," an "old man," a couple of "low comedians," an actor of "character," or eccentric parts, a "heavy man," the villain of the piece, and a "walking gentleman." There would be a pair of "leading ladies," a "juvenile lead," an "ingénue," a "chamber-maid," an "old woman,"-perhaps two. These are the more important people which a full and first-rate company would require. The Théâtre-Français, it may be noted, has twenty-two associates, each sharing in the profits and playing the best parts in his or her line.

This classification is not rigid. It often happens that, owing to special circumstances, the "low comedian" takes the part of an old man, or the "character" actor is cast for a "heavy" part. No hard and fast rules can be laid down. All precedent yields before the diversity of talent exhibited by the different actors holding technically the same rank and the same line of parts. In the Théâtre-Français, M. Coquelin is one of the "low comedians," but in the "Etrangère" of M. Dumas fils, M. Coquelin created the part of the Duke of Septmonts, the aristocratic villain of the piece; and when the play was adapted to the American stage this same rascally Duke was played liere by Mr. Coghlan, the "leading man" of the theater. And again, in the "Fourchambault" of M. Emile Augier, the greatest success of the Exposition year and an honest and hardy

play, the two strongly contrasted and pivotal parts of the piece are played by M. Got and M. Coquelin. Now, M. Got and M.Coquelin are both technically" low comedians"; they both act, or have acted, the intriguing serving-men of Molière's comedies, the valets de Molière, as the parts are called; and these were the parts Molière wrote for himself, and to play them in Molière's own house is no small honor. Indeed, one well-known French actor is said to have refused an engagement at the Théâtre-Français, because he did not wish to enter a house where the valets were the masters. Before MM. Got and Coquelin, the parts were held by M. Samson, the tutor of Rachel, and by M. Regnier, the teacher of both of his successors. And no one of these four remarkable comedians limited himself to the parts which came strictly within his technical line. M. Coquelin to cite again the actor of at once the greatest promise and the finest performance on the French stage of to-day-acts, outside of his own line, the villains in the "Fourchambault" and the " Étrangère," the suffering and hungry ballad-maker in M. Théodore de Banville's beautiful "Gringoire," and the revolutionary hero of "Jean Dacier."

The "leading lady" has, in some respects, the most important position in the company, and it is a position which there is now great difficulty in getting competent actresses to fill. It is no easy matter to find a lady young enough to look Lady Teazle or the belle whose stratagem the comedy sets forth, and old enough to know how to play it. It is no light task to discover an actress capable of rattling off the empty chatter of Lady Gay Spanker one night and of filling the far different and more difficult part of Clara Douglas the night after. It is hard indeed to find a nature flexible enough to present a picture of simple English maidenhood, calm and trustful and devoted, an Esther Eccles in "Caste," for instance, and the week after to portray with adequate warmth the fiery and voluptuous Creole of " Article 47," one of the most unhealthy of French fictions. It is not only difficult to discover any one woman capable of giving full effect to all these different dramas-it is impossible; and in a company of unusual strength, two, if not three "leading ladies" must needs be included.

womanhood and of suggestions of a sort of superficial satire of some of the more glaring aspects of American society, Miss Fanny Davenport has been deservedly popular. She comes of good theatrical stock; her father, the late E. L. Davenport, was one of the foremost actors of America, excelling in some parts and good in all; and through her mother Miss Davenport is related to several of the leading theatrical families of England. She has youth and beauty and she sets these off with much lavishness of raiment. A story is told of a French actress who excused herself to the author of a new comedy of fashionable life for her tardiness at rehearsal on the plea of a prior engagement with his collabora

teur.

"But I have no collaborateur, Mademoiselle," said the dramatist; "the play is wholly my own."

"You forget the dress-maker," quietly answered the actress.

Now all the plays in which Miss Davenport appears have two authors, a dramatist and a dress-maker; and sometimes the latter deserves as much credit for success as the former. But although many of her earlier parts were of this sort, characters of no real depth, and, indeed, of only superficial vitality, she has shown herself capable of better things. Her Lady Teazle is an admirable picture of a buxom country girl thrust into the midst of fashionable frivolity; to the screen scene she lent a pathos most affecting, while it did not leave the key of comedy on which the whole performance of the play ought always to be pitched. And in melodramatic parts she has her full share of the ability of her father and mother. Miss Davenport has youth and beauty, she has intelligence and training; she lacks but a touch more of taste and a somewhat finer and more delicate nature to be able to play Rosalind and the more poetical parts of the higher comedy. Poetry, indeed, seems altogether beyond her reach. She is a realist, rather than an idealist, and what is Rosalind without poetry, or Viola?