centre the interest on a character which, charming as an incidental
sketch, is, as an essential, an excrescence. Practically the play is at
an end with the finish of the Third Act. Why lug in the _Abbe
Constantin_? And what an Abbe!!

Where are the familiar details? Where the ancient snuffbox, where his
snuffy old pocket-handkerchief? And where the old well-thumbed breviary
from which he is inseparable? M. LAFONTAINE as the _Abbe Constantin_,
_the_ man to the life, was never without the "old black book," under his
arm. The Haymarket Abbe takes his meals without blessing himself, by way
of saying grace, and fumbles about the heads of people who ask his
benison, like an awkward phrenologist feeling for bumps. And what kind
of an Abbe would he be who would tell a young girl that, "when she comes
to be as old as he is, she will have learnt to doubt everything?" Is it
characteristic of a French Abbe to complain of his housekeeper "lighting
his fire with his sermons?" It would be quite in keeping with the type
of an English Clergyman, who, as a rule, preaches from a written sermon;
but not of a French Priest, who preaches without book or manuscript. No;
the _Abbe Dubois_ is the _Abbe Constantin_ spoilt, a French _Cure_
Anglicised into a pet Ritualistic Clergyman, ROBERT-ELSMERE'd-all-over
by Mr. GRUNDY, and finally im-parson-ated by Mr. BEERBOHM TREE. Wasn't
it Mr. BEERBOHM TREE who, years ago, created the original of the
Bath-bun-eating comical Curate, in _The Private Secretary_? Well, this
is the same comical Clergyman grown older, and with the burden on, what
he is pleased to call, his mind of a dying scoundrel's last speech and
confession. The strongest objection he has to violate his sacred trust
arises from the fear that such a revelation would break the heart of an
exemplary old Goody Two-Shoes, for whom he has all his life long
cherished a youthful love, the thought of which, and not his
supernatural vocation, has sustained him, so I understood him to say,
throughout his priestly career. All very pretty and "pale young
Curatey," and theatrically sentimental, but don't put this man forward
as the self-sacrificing hero of a Melodrama. No; the subject is best let
alone. Mr. GRUNDY seems to have rushed in where wiser men have feared to
tread, and thoroughly to have "put his foot in it," all for the sake of
transplanting _L'Abbe Constantin_, whom he has transformed into _L'Abbe
In-Constantin_.

The piece is beautifully pu