money-making institution, and must, therefore, strive to interest as many as possible. Its appeals must be to the masses seeking amusement. Hence it is confined to large cities. In these cities its efforts must be directed to those in search of pleasure, and therefore to those quite partially, rather than to those highly cultivated; to those desiring coarse stimulus, rather than to those in love with refined sentiment. Such is the spirit of a theatrical audience, not merely from their native quality, but from the time devoted to this amusement, and the part it plays of hilarity and excitement in their daily lives. The theatre is thus compelled to bow to a money necessity, a relatively menial service, and so to miss, in whole or in part, its own æsthetical end.

This falling off from purity has all along been felt, was felt during the restoration, had been previously felt. In the period under consideration it called for censure, provoked hostility on the part of earnest minds, and thus early created a moral sentiment, which, to the present hour, pressing hard upon the theatre, has accelerated its downward tendencies. If the most intelligent and moral refuse to be pleased, and withhold their patronage, much more must the classes less critical in these respects be gratified. The patrons must control the play. Thus the theatre, as a rule, in recent times, has been forced below the level of high art, first, by the interested monetary motives that govern it; and, second, by an adverse moral sentiment, passing it over still more unreservedly to sensuous pastime and pleasure, to comedy and farce. This

degeneracy of the theatre has been partial and variable, rather than complete, relative rather than absolute. There have been places and spasms of improvement, and the general moral elevation of society has told powerfully here as elsewhere.

This downward literary tendency the theatre has also accepted and confirmed by its manageIts expenditures on scenic effects have been of the most lavish character. Herein the modern stands in striking contrast with the early stage.

The rush-strewn boards that Shakespeare trod almost under the open sky, lounged on by a bantering nobility, pressed close by a rude, noisy crowd, had little in common with the luxury, the gaslight, the brilliant, sensuous appeals of the modern theatre; and we may easily believe, that the hold on reality in action was in the same stern spirit, as were these coarse, homely relations to facts.

Every possibility has been exhausted to amuse and delight men through their senses, thus transferring the chief effect from the intellectual to the physical world. A newspaper critic gives the following description of one of these modern plays: "It includes a burning house, a modern barroom, real gin cock-tails, a river-side pier, a steamboat in motion, the grand saloon or state-cabin of the steamboat, the deck of the same, the wheelhouse, the funnels, and the steamboat in flames; and all these objects are presented with singular fidelity to their originals." Here is a show in itself quite sufficient to captivate the popular mind.

Sentiment and character would be a gratuitous addition. It prepares us to hear a like critic say of a similar play, "It is not a work of literature, but a work of business. The piece is a rough conglomeration of the nothings of the passing hour-objects and incidents drawn, but not always drawn with accuracy, from the streets, the public conveyances, the haunts of profligacy. These nothings are offered for their own sake, and not made tributary to any intellectual purpose whatever." It may be doubted whether readings do not now furnish a more pure intellectual rendering of dramatic composition than does the stage.

Another cause which depresses the theatre, without affecting the drama as a written product, is the unfitness of high ethical sentiment, magnanimity, faith, love to constitute a public spectacle for a mixed, careless, critical audience of cold, superficial amateurs, such as are wont to frequent our theatres. Fine scenery, violent declamation, showy beauty, and rich attire invite a battery of opera-glasses; not so the deep, secret emotions with which the heart wrestles, nor its holiest affections, nor its purest adorations; these all draw back till they can disclose themselves, like the opening flower, in a light that quickens and renews them. How the idle claps, following hard on a scene of pathos, tumble down the airy fabric of our sympathies, like a card house, and choke us again with the dust of a noisy, conventional life.

The literary drama and the theatre parted company, because the limited and sensuous aims of the one were not consistent with the high bent of the other; and the separation dates from this deep decline of the English stage.

A second conflict which reveals the agencies at work in this transition period was that between French and English art. The French literature was now ready to exert a strong influence on the English mind. Easily uniting itself to the classical taste, with which it is so closely affiliated, it constituted the chief foreign power which affected this period. The English court was in close sympathy with France. There it had spent the years of its banishment, and returned, emulous of the tastes and refinements of its allies. The brilliant reign of Louis XIV. was in progress, the great epoch of French letters. Dryden, the earliest critic of England, favored in many respects the new refinements, as they were thought, of art. Many words, chiefly of a polite, social cast, found their way into our language. Rhymed verse was introduced into the drama, and it, in keeping with this change, strove to assume in dialogue the sprightly refinement, wit and declamatory force of the French stage. These tendencies were in conflict with the freedom and vigor of the previous age, with its thorough English spirit. Thus Dryden, with eyes couched by the new criticism, was led to say, "Let any man who understands English read diligently the works of Shakespeare and Fletcher,

and I dare undertake, that he will find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense."

This new art, and this freedom and refinement of manners, which the English at this time thought to win under the lead of the French, resulted in a feebleness, coarseness and debauchery, which those whom they imitated have been quite ready to laugh at. Says Taine of these years, "There were two classes, natural beings on the one hand, and artificial ones on the other; the first, with the coarseness and shamelessness of their primitive inclinations, the second, with the frivolities and vices of worldly habits; the first, uncultivated, their simplicity revealing nothing but their innate baseness; the second, cultivated, their refinement instilling into them nothing but new corruption."*

English character is so little allied to French character, that it is at once made unsound and superficial by imitation. The moral force is central in the Englishman. It is and must be momentarily operative for good or evil in his action. The Frenchman more easily leaves it one side, or out of sight, and can reach a free surface life, in a measure forgetful of it. Hence sin, social sin, always bears a deeper, more gross and sanguinary tinge with the English than with the French. They are compelled to recognize their own indecency, and it thus becomes a double irritation. They strike every instant against the moral law, and feel the wounding recoil. Their eyes are open in each transgres

* Taine's English Literature, vol. i. p. 512.