which he
himself has given voice, garb, and action.

So the present little sketch was suggested by real life; the first hint
for it was taken from one of the lines of criticism--not that of the
author--adopted towards the earliest performances of an actress who,
coming among us as a stranger a year and a half ago, has won the respect
and admiration of us all. The share in dramatic success which, in this
country at any rate, belongs to physical gift and personal charm; the
effect of the public sensitiveness to both, upon the artist and upon art;
the difference between French and English dramatic ideals; these were the
various thoughts suggested by the dramatic interests of the time. They
were not new, they had been brought into prominence on more than one
occasion during the last few years, and, in a general sense, they are
common to the whole history of dramatic art. In dealing with them the
problem of the story-teller was twofold--on the one hand, to describe the
public in its two divisions of those who know or think they know, and
those whose only wish is to feel and to enjoy; and on the other hand, to
draw such an artist as should embody at once all the weakness and all the
strength involved in the general situation. To do this, it was necessary
to exaggerate and emphasise all the criticisms that had ever been brought
against beauty in high dramatic place, while, at the same time, charm and
loveliness were inseparable from the main conception. And further, it was
sought to show that, although the English susceptibility to physical
charm--susceptibility greater here, in matters of art, than it is in
France--may have, and often does have, a hindering effect upon the
artist, still, there are other influences in a great society which are
constantly tending to neutralise this effect; in other words, that even
in England an actress may win her way by youth and beauty, and still
achieve by labour and desert another and a greater fame.

These were the ideas on which this little sketch was based, and in
working them out the writer has not been conscious of any portraiture of
individuals. Whatever attractiveness she may have succeeded in giving to
her heroine is no doubt the shadow, so to speak, of a real influence so
strong that no one writing of the English stage at the present moment can
easily escape it; but otherwise everything is fanciful, the outcome, and
indeed, too much the outcome, of certain critical ideas. And in t