art. This view is confirmed by the case
of a deaf-mute, told to the writer by Professor FAY, who had prepared
to enjoy Ristori's acting by reading in advance the advertised play,
but on his reaching the theater another play was substituted and he
could derive no idea from its presentation. The experience of the
present writer is that he could gain very little meaning in detail out
of the performance at a Chinese theater, where there is much more
true pantomime than in the European, without a general notion of the
subject as conveyed from time to time by an interpreter. A crucial
test on this subject was made at the representation at Washington,
in April, 1881, of _Frou-Frou_ by Sarah Bernhardt and the excellent
French company supporting her. Several persons of special intelligence
and familiar with theatrical performances, but who did not understand
spoken French, and had not heard or read the play before or even seen
an abstract of it, paid close attention to ascertain what they could
learn of the plot and incidents from the gestures alone. This could be
determined in the special play the more certainly as it is not founded
on historic events or any known facts. The result was that from the
entrance of the heroine during the first scene in a peacock-blue
riding habit to her death in a black walking-suit, three hours or five
acts later, none of the students formed any distinct conception of the
plot. This want of apprehension extended even to uncertainty whether
_Gilberte_ was married or not; that is, whether her adventures were
those of a disobedient daughter or a faithless wife, and, if married,
which of the half dozen male personages was her husband. There were
gestures enough, indeed rather a profusion of them, and they were
thoroughly appropriate to the words (when those were understood) in
which fun, distress, rage, and other emotions were expressed, but in
no cases did they interpret the motive for those emotions. They were
the dressing for the words of the actors as the superb millinery
was that of their persons, and perhaps acted as varnish to bring out
dialogues and soliloquies in heightened effect. But though varnish can
bring into plainer view dull or faded characters, it cannot introduce
into them significance where none before existed. The simple fact was
that the gestures of the most famed histrionic school, the Comedie
Francaise, were not significant, far less self-interpreting, and
though praised as the