ck and Henderson, beneath the
pavement of Westminster Abbey. Less than fifty years ago an American
historian of the stage (James Rees, 1845) described it as a wreck,
overwhelmed with "gloom and eternal night," above which the genius of
the drama was mournfully presiding, in the likeness of an owl. The New
York veteran of to-day, although his sad gaze may not penetrate backward
quite to the effulgent splendours of the old Park, will sigh for
Burton's and the Olympic, and the luminous period of Mrs. Richardson,
Mary Taylor, and Tom Hamblin. The Philadelphia veteran gazes back to the
golden era of the old Chestnut Street theatre, the epoch of tie-wigs and
shoe-buckles, the illustrious times of Wood and Warren, when Fennell,
Cooke, Cooper, Wallack, and J.B. Booth were shining names in tragedy,
and Jefferson and William Twaits were great comedians, and the beautiful
Anne Brunton was the queen of the stage. The Boston veteran speaks
proudly of the old Federal and the old Tremont, of Mary Duff, Julia
Pelby, Charles Eaton, and Clara Fisher, and is even beginning to gild
with reminiscent splendour the first days of the Boston Theatre, when
Thomas Barry was manager and Julia Bennett Barrow and Mrs. John Wood
contended for the public favour. In a word, the age that has seen
Rachel, Seebach, Ristori, Charlotte Cushman, and Adelaide Neilson, the
age that sees Ellen Terry, Mary Anderson, Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson,
Henry Irving, Salvini, Coquelin, Lawrence Barrett, John Gilbert, John S.
Clarke, Ada Rehan, James Lewis, Clara Morris, and Richard Mansfield, is
a comparatively sterile period--"Too long shut in strait and few, thinly
dieted on dew"--which ought to have felt the spell of Cooper and Mary
Buff, and known what acting was when Cooke's long forefinger pointed the
way, and Dunlap bore the banner, and pretty Mrs. Marshall bewitched the
father of his country, and Dowton raised the laugh, and lovely Mrs.
Barrett melted the heart, and the roses were "bright by the calm
Bendemeer." The present writer, who began theatre-going in earnest over
thirty years ago, finds himself full often musing over a dramatic time
that still seems brighter than this--when he could exult in the fairy
splendour and comic humour of _Aladdin_ and weep over the sorrows of
_The Drunkard_, when he was thrilled and frightened by J.B. Booth in
_The Apostate_, and could find an ecstasy of pleasure in the loves of
Alonzo and Cora and the sublime self-sacrifice of