rst to create strong characters
and then to break them; and the manner in which they are broken usually
involves the elements alike of dramatic effect and of pathos. That
singular fact in mortal experience may have been noticed by this author.
His drama is a forcible exposition of it. _The Middleman_ was set upon
Palmer's stage in such a way as to strengthen the dramatic illusion by
the fidelity of scenery. The firing-house, with its furnaces in
operation, was a copy of what may be seen at Worcester. The picture of
English life was excellent.

When Willard played the part of Judah Llewellyn for the first time in
America (December 29, 1890), he gained from a sympathetic and judicious
audience a verdict of emphatic admiration. Judah Llewellyn is a good
part in one of the most striking plays of the period--a play that tells
an interesting and significant story by expressive, felicitous, and
incessant action; affects the feelings by situations that are vital
with dramatic power; inspires useful thought upon a theme of
psychological importance; cheers the mind with a fresh breeze of
satirical humour; and delights the instinct of taste by its crisp and
pungent style. Alike by his choice of a comparatively original subject
and his deft method in the treatment of it Henry Arthur Jones has shown
a fine dramatic instinct; and equally in the evolution of character and
the expression of experience and emotion he has wrought with feeling and
vigour. Most of the plays that are written, in any given period, pass
away with the period to which they appertain. _Judah_ is one of the
exceptions; for its brilliantly treated theme is one of perennial
interest, and there seems reason to believe, of a work so vital, that
long after the present generation has vanished it still will keep its
place in the theatre, and sometimes be acted, not as a quaint relic but
as a living lesson.

That theme is the psychic force in human organism. The author does not
obtrude it; does not play the pedant with it; does not lecture upon it;
and above all does not bore with it. He only uses it; and he has been so
true to his province as a dramatist and not an advocate that he never
once assumes to decide upon any question of doctrine that may be
involved in the assertion of it. His heroine is a young woman who thinks
herself to be possessed of a certain inherent restorative power of
curing the sick. This power is of psychic origin and it operates through
the med