the Terror was Dugazon permitted to appear upon the stage again. The next year all the Sociétaires were cast into prison, some of them guillotined. Even Talma, a fierce Revolutionist, was obliged to fly for his life. All other privileges being abolished, it was not to be supposed that those of the theatre would be respected; free trade was declared in all things dramatic, and Théâtres Sans Culottes, and Théâtres des Victoires Nationales sprang up like mushrooms. In 1799 the remnant of the Français reunited, and was established by the Directory in the building it still occupies in the Rue de Richelieu, under the name of the Théâtre de la République. Five years later it resumed its old title, and under the Empire its old importance. Even during the horrors of the Russian campaign Napoleon found time to enter into its affairs. A decree, dated Moscow, October 15, 1812, fixed the number of Sociétaires at twenty-four, with the right to retire upon a pension after twenty years of membership. This constitution was modified in 1850-9. Talma was the great stage luminary of the Empire; his fame was not only French but European. Upon his acting Chateaubriand has bequeathed us the following splendid rhapsody: 'What, then, was Talma? Himself—the century in which he lived and the times of antiquity. He had the profound and concentrated passions of love and patriotism; they burst forth from his breast with the force of an explosion. He had the inspiration, the derangement of genius, characteristic of the revolution through which he had passed. The terrible spectacles by which he was surrounded repeated themselves in the outbursts of his genius with the lamentable and distant accents of the choir of Sophocles and Euripides. His grace-which was not by any means a conventional grace-seized hold of your mind almost like a misfortune. Remorse, gloomy ambition, jealousy, the melancholy of the soul, physical pain, the follies of the gods, adversity and human sorrow-these were the things he understood. His mere appearance upon the stage, the very sound of his voice, had in it something overpoweringly tragical. An expression of blended suffering and thought rested on his brow and breathed through his whole being-his repose, his movements, his gestures, his every step. A Greek, he would arrive panting and gloomy from the ruins of Argos, an immortal Orestes, tormented as he had been three thousand years by the Eumenides. A Frenchman, he would come from the solitudes of St. Denis, where the parques of 1793 had cut the thread of the mortal existence of kings. Wearing an aspect of unmixed sorrow, awaiting something still unknown to him, but decreed by a Heaven which he deemed unjust, he walked onward like a galley slave of destiny, inexorably chained between fatality and terror.' Talma had been Napoleon's friend when the latter was only a poor lieutenant, and continued to be the friend of the great Emperor, by whom he was always received on the most intimate terms. He died in 1826. His funeral was attended by an immense concourse of people of all grades; nobles, artists, bourgeois, rich and poor, assembled to pay a last token of respect to him whose art had so often delighted and instructed them. A marble statue was raised to his memory by public subscription, to which his brother comedians gave the handsome sum of 12,000 francs. It is now the property of the Théâtre Français. Sempiternal youth is decidedly one of the characteristics of the actors and actresses of the French stage. We have seen Baron playing youthful lovers at seventy-five, Molé unapproachable in the same rôle at sixty-five. More wonderful still, we read of La Brie, Molière's mistress, the original Agnès of L'Ecole des Maris,' sustaining that part at the latter age by the universal demand of the audience, who refused to accept any other, even after she had voluntarily relinquished it. So wrote Voltaire. Il faut qu'elle ait été charmante, A peine des attraits naissans In more recent times Mademoiselle Mars was a remarkable instance of this youth in age. At sixty her figure had lost none of its suppleness and youthful grace, and she still played the ingénues. At fifty-eight she was arranging a marriage for her granddaughter, but the bridegroom elect, a young man, fell so desperately in love with the grandam that he broke off the match. Some years afterwards Scribe read her his comedy of the Grandmother.' 'Yes, it is very good,' she said when he had finished; but I have been trying to think who can play the grandmother.' 'Ah, yes, that is the difficulty,' replied the author, not daring to say he had written it for her. She was a devoted admirer of Napoleon, who on his side had a great admiration for her talents. During the Hundred Days she appeared upon the stage in a dress covered with violets. Upon the return of the King the fickle Parisians resented this mark of respect to the fallen Emperor, and greeted her entrance with cries of 'À genoux! à genoux!' But, advancing to the front, she addressed them in a bold, firm tone: Gentlemen,' she said, 'I will not kneel; and if you will not have the kindness to permit me to finish my part, I quit the theatre for ever.' The very audacity of the speech turned the tide, and the applause that greeted it very soon silenced the hisses. To the honour of Louis XVIII. be it said that, although some sycophants made a formal complaint against the actress, he himself protected her from further annoyance. But The production of Victor Hugo's 'Hernani' in 1830 may be said to have dealt the death-blow to the classic drama. Never was a more determined opposition organised than that which the author of Notre Dame' had to encounter on that occasion. The actors and actresses not only displayed their hostility at the rehearsals, but they worked unceasingly against him in the cafés and salons, where they turned the play into ridicule, and even supplied the Vaudeville with materials for a burlesque of one of its principal scenes. on the night of production all les bohêmes, his friends and associates, came to the rescue. Such a group as assembled before the doors of the Français by one o'clock had never been seen there before: men with long unkempt locks and shaggy beards, gaudy, shabby, eccentric, ragged. The comedians mounted to the roof and hurled down orange-peel and the sweepings of the theatre upon their heads, but they were immovable. When they were admitted they filled the orchestra, one of the galleries, and nearly the whole of the pit; they wiled away the interval before the rising of the curtain by refreshing upon garlic and sausages, filling the house with an odour not grateful to delicate nostrils. When the play began they drowned every dissentient sound with applause and brought the play to a triumphant conclusion. But on the second night, and for forty-four nights afterwards, there was a fight. 'Hernani' was performed in dumb show, amidst hisses, laughter, applause-but to crowded houses. When it was reproduced eight years afterwards with general applause, people could not believe but that it had been considerably altered. Hugo had not rewritten a line. It was the taste that had changed-the romantic had slain the classic. Yet the old form was yet to have a brief but splendid resuscitation. About 1831, a pale, slight, dark-eyed girl might have been heard on summer evenings in the Champs Elysées, reciting, upon a strip of carpet, passages from Corneille and Racine, with action so graceful, with such emotion and emphasis, that she seemed almost inspired. She was always attended by an old woman, carrying a violin, upon which she scraped a few notes to attract the crowd. After a time both disappeared, the one to reappear as the great Rachel, to once more thrill the Parisians with the crimes of Phèore and the sorrows of Camille, as they had been thrilled in the times gone by by Lecouvreur and Dumesnil. One night-it was on the occasion of her entering upon her grand new home in the Rue Troncin-she gave a grand supper. Presently the guests were desired to range themselves at one end of the gorgeous salon, as mademoiselle intended to recite some passages from Corneille and Racine. Then there entered from a side door a shabby old woman with a violin, a strip of carpet, and a tin cup, followed by the great actress in the shabbiest of dresses. The carpet was laid down, the fiddle scraped, and Rachel began to act as she used in the Champs Elysées. In the midst of the tumultuous applause that followed, she, a tin cup in her hand, went round to the company. 'Formerly,' she said, 'it was for mamma; now it is for the poor. But, after all, as it has been observed by a living writer, it was the actress the people crowded to see, and not the old classical drama. Corneille and Racine were the artificial productions of an artificial age; they are dead, never to be resuscitated. Molière, who depicted a real instead of an ideal world, still lives, and Tartuffe,' 'Jourdain, 'Harpagon,' still find admirable representatives; but none can recall from the tomb the past glories of 'Horace,'' Cinna,' or 'Mithridate.' One of the most notable features of the Comédie Française is its extraordinary preservation of traditions. At the present day such pieces as Tartuffe,' 'L'Avare,' 'Le Misanthrope,' are acted precisely as they were arranged for their original representation. There is no theatrical body in the world which holds so high a position as this; it is the goal to which every French actor who aspires to the higher branches of his profession looks forward. become a Sociétaire an artist must have attained a high proficiency. After performing a certain time on trial, he or she-for both sexes are eligible-is admitted to the privileges of the body corporate. It need scarcely be added-the fact is so well known-that the receipts of the theatre are supplemented by a grant from the Government. The Français has a library containing everything that is valuable in the dramatic literature of France; its archives are replete with records from its earliest existence; its sculpture gallery is filled with the images of its greatest authors and actors; and, most remarkable of all, it is one out of only two institutions of the ancient régime that have escaped the annihilating hand of four revolutions. 6 H. BARTON BAKER. Το Her Child's Cry. THE story I have to tell is so very slight, the incidents are so very homely, and the people whom it concerns are so ordinary, that more than once I have taken up a pen to begin it and put down the pen again beside the virgin page. If I attempt a mere narration of fact, without adding colour or emotion, the interest of a reader is likely soon to flag, and he may probably resent finding in a publication where he expects subjective fiction in narratives, a simple and literal account of things, people, and events such as he is accustomed to meet in the columns of a newspaper. As I have determined to go on, I hope I over-estimate the danger. And now for what I have to tell : I live in the S.W. district of London, and when I take the train for town Loughborough Junction is the most convenient station. One dull heavy day in the October of last year I booked at Loughborough for Ludgate Hill, and took my seat in a thirdclass carriage of a South-Western train. It was neither for economy nor for the pride that apes humility' that I travelled third class; but my business obliges me to spend most of my time alone, and when I have an opportunity of getting among people, it is good for my business that I should see and hear as many of my fellow-creatures as possible. Hence I prefer the frequently changing crowd of a third-class carriage to the thinly masked solitude of a higher class. On this occasion the carriage in which I found myself had only shoulder-high compartment-partitions, so that one could see from end to end. There were in all seven or eight persons present, and I was in the last compartment but one, with my back to the engine, and in the right-hand corner as I sat. For a few minutes I engaged myself in observing the five or six people scattered up and down the major portion in front of me. Then looking over my shoulder, I found that the compartment nearest to the engine contained only a woman with a young baby in her arms. She was sitting with her back to mine. Owing to the violence of the wrench I had to give my neck in order to see her, my glance was brief; but while it lasted I caught sight of an expression such as I had never before seen on a human face, an expression which so affected my curiosity and wonder that after allowing a little time to elapse, and just as we reached Walworth Road, I shifted myself to the other end of the seat on which I sat, |