nspiracy. He had literally hewn his way through the ranks of his
opponents to the position he now held at the Parthenon. It was not a
very high position, it was true, but he had been seen and heard; and the
future was before him.

Similarly, he had argued, in the interests of Dramatic Art, Miss DE
GONCOURT must fight her way. He used the aggressive verb metaphorically,
of course, and in its moral sense; but he meant it to imply all that was
fearless in the conduct of an earnest woman conscious of her literary
and dramatic power--she must fight her way! It had fallen to his lot to
read many original Dramas, but among all the unacted works of his time,
none were so full of promise as Miss DE GONCOURT'S _Before the Dawn_. He
could wish himself no better fortune than the opportunity of creating
the leading _role_ at a West End Theatre.

Miss DE GONCOURT hung upon the music of his words. At least such was her
confession to Miss ELMIRA JENKS, her admirer and satellite, (every
dramatic student has a human satellite, or a confiding dog, and the
latter is generally the most constant) who agreed with her that in Art,
sympathy is everything.

Miss DE GONCOURT may be said to have served an amateur apprenticeship to
the art of the playwright; it had begun at school with Charades; it had
progressed through several seasons of amateur theatricals; it had
culminated in five Acts of blank verse; and apart from the epistolary
appeals that had been made to London Managers, to save the reputation of
native modern dramatists by its immediate production, Miss ELMIRA JENKS
had discussed the work in a certain lady's journal, to which she
contributed, assuring the world that _Before the Dawn_ was worthy of the
noblest efforts of dramatic poetry. Miss DE GONCOURT was also put
forward as an honour to womanhood, having preferred the higher life of
Art to the lower mission of Matrimony; and all that she and her friends
now desired, was a fitting opportunity for the demonstration of the
integrity of her ambition, which was to follow in the footsteps of Mrs.
INCHBALD, JOANNA BAILLIE, and other distinguished lady dramatists. Miss
DE GONCOURT was a spinster and an orphan, with a settled income of three
hundred and fifty pounds a year; and she sat in her little Bedford Park
study from day to day, with a pen in her hand, and a smile on her lips,
a smile of hope and confidence.

It was a dainty room, with a grey dimity dado, that marked off a few old
e