at it was enormously
important to conceal from the Press and the country (and the
adventuress)--a telegram with full details in the plainest of plain
English is despatched from the local post-office to the great financier
who had made the deal possible. The charming _naivete_ of the family
gathering at the Foreign Office (it might have been Mme. TUSSAUD's) and
the adorable ingenuousness of the idea of bringing down a great
international financier by holding up his cargo of bullion in a foreign
port, should lead no one to complain that high politics are dull.

I wouldn't have missed Mr. DENNIS EADIE's _Disraeli_ for a good deal.
Where it was at all possible--which it was in general; Mr. PARKER only
sprinkled his extravagances--the ease and plausibility of it were quite
admirable. This adroit player gave us the tact, the wit, the gallantry,
the generosity, the romantic exuberance. It was a fine performance, and
it will be finer as its firm outline is filled in. The play, for all its
vagaries, may even serve to remind a careless age of its too lightly
forgotten spacious dead. Miss MARY JERROLD'S _Lady Beaconsfield_ was, I
suppose, more in the nature of an imaginary portrait. It was beautiful
and convincing. As a stage adventuress MME. DORZIAT was most attractive,
if only she had been credible. She had no business to be in any of the
situations in which she found herself, and must have needed all her
skill to conceal the fact from herself. Miss MARY GLYNNE as _The Lady
Clarissa_, the portentous _Duchess of Glastonbury's_ pretty daughter and
the doomed bride of the egregious _Deeford_, was quite charming to watch
and hear. Mr. CYRIL RAYMOND should, I am sure, mitigate the asinine
priggishness of the young viscount's bearing in the First Act. His
conversion from this to the merely crass stupidity of the second was too
much for us to bear. Mr. VINCENT STERNROYD as Mr. _Hugh Meyers_ looked
quite as if he might have been able to put his hand on two million; Mr.
HARBEN as _Sir Michael Probert_ just as if he would sign any document
which was put before him under threat or suggestion. Mr. CAMPBELL
GULLAN, as the adventuress's husband, made himself the kind of clerk
that no one would have trusted for a moment with even the petty cash.
These things I know are necessary and I acquit him of any artistic
impropriety. But you will go to see this piece chiefly for the sake of
Mr. EADIE's _tour de force_, for the thrill of the rather pleasa