idealism. You can have it in a statue, a melody, a poem; but
you cannot have it on the stage, which is at its highest but a graphic
realism. The very finest acting is only fine in proportion as it is an
exact reproduction of physical life. How, then, can it be art, which is
only great in proportion as it escapes from the physical life into the
spiritual?"

"But may not dramatic art escape thither also?" asked the critic, who
was young, and deferred to him.

"Impossible, sir. It is shackled with all the forms of earth, and--worse
still--with all its shams and commonplaces. When we read _Othello_, we
only behold the tempest of the passions and the wreck of a great soul;
but when we see _Othello_, we are affronted by the colour of the Moor's
skin, and are brought face to face with the vulgarities of the bolster!"

"Then there is no use in a stage at all?"

"I am not prepared to conclude that. It is agreeable to a vast number of
people: as a Frith or an O'Neil is agreeable to a vast number of people
to whom an Ary Scheffer or a Delaroche would be unintelligible. It is
better, perhaps, that this vast number should look at Friths and O'Neils
than that they should never look on any painting at all. Now the stage
paints rudely, often tawdrily; still it does paint. It is better than
nothing. I take it that the excellence, as the end, of histrionic art is
to portray, to the minds of the many, poetic conceptions which, without
such realistic rendering, would remain unknown and impalpable to all
save the few. Histrionic art is at its greatest only when it is the
follower and the interpreter of literature; the actor translates the
poet's meanings into the common tongue that is understood of the people.
But how many on the miserable stage of this country have ever had either
humility to perceive, or capability to achieve this?"

The other critic smiled.

"I imagine not one, in our day. Their view of their profession is
similar to Mrs. Delamere's, when Max Moncrief wrote that sparkling
comedy for her. 'My dear,' she said to him, 'why did you trouble
yourself to put all that wit and sense into it? We didn't want _that_. I
shall wear all my diamonds, and I have ordered three splendid new
dresses!'"

* * *

All day long the fowls kept it alive with sound and movement; for of all
mercurial and fussy things there is nothing on the face of the earth to
equal cocks and hens. They have such an utterly exaggerated