emendous muscular energy. You may answer that they have
miraculous energy wherewith to flap them. If, however, the miraculous
enters into the matter, why not imagine a miraculous method of flying
which does not demand wings--by so doing you would avoid the necessity
of making the angels look like ill-constructed birds. Something "smart"
might be done in the way of a "dirigible balloon" species of angel!
Fiends are modelled as flying-machines on the lines of the bat--this may
be taken from the latest Mephisto. The contrivers of stage effects are
not to be blamed because they cannot overcome the difficulties offered
by the playwrights. Yet they have not exhausted their means. They seem
to be working on wrong lines, and so, too, are our scene-painters
generally; but that is raising a very large question demanding separate
treatment.

Certainly some years ago Mr Gordon Craig experimentally, in a curious
piece called _Sword or Song_, presented at the Shaftesbury, gave
suggestions in the supernatural that deserved attention, and in a broad
way showed the possibility of arriving at striking stage effects by
suggestion rather than actual depiction. It is, indeed, the fault of our
play-mounters that they are too precise about dotting "i's" and crossing
"t's," and like the pet photographers of amateurs they show too much
detail.

Years ago, on the first night of _Hansel und Gretel_ at Daly's--what a
delightful first night!--for a while the effect of the troops of angels
on the stairs was quite charming--for a while--but, alas! the stage grew
lighter, gauzes were raised, and then we saw plainly the young women of
the chorus, with big wings, and could identify face after face,
recollecting this young lady as formerly a peasant boy in one comic
opera, and that as a village maiden in another, and so on. What a "give
away," to use a common effective phrase!

The last prodigious production of _Faust_? Well, what thinking person
can swallow the devil and the electric sparks from the sword, the wine
drawn from the table, the comicalities of the witches' kitchen, or be
moved by the Brocken scenes? It is very well to say that Goethe intended
and expected his drama to be put on the stage, though this can hardly
apply to the second part. Even if he did he cannot have expected such
material matters to be treated as of serious importance--of such
importance that, as represented, his great drama seems chiefly contrived
to lead up to spectacu