public. It will also afford matter for a brilliant chapter
in the second or third series of Mr. and Mrs. BANCROFT'S _On and Off the
Stage_. A great night, too, for the eminent adapters Messrs. SCOTT and
STEPHENSON, once known as "the Brothers ROWE," who rowed in the same boat.

Never, at any time, has this version of the French play been so well cast
as it is now at Garrick Theatre, though nervousness told on all the actors,
especially on the elder ones, except, apparently, Mrs. BANCROFT, in whose
performance there was hardly any trace of it, though once she nearly missed
her cue while resting awhile at the back of the stage.

The part of _Lady Henry Fairfax_ has literally nothing whatever to do with
the plot, and were it not played as it is now, and played so capitally by
Mrs. BANCROFT, it would be better, for an English audience at least, if
omitted entirely, or reduced to a few appropriate lines in pleasant places.
An English audience wants the story, when once begun, to go on without any
break or interruption; and indeed, but for dramatic effect, an English
audience is inclined to resent even the division of a piece into Acts,
unless such arrangement is evidently necessitated by some heavy mechanical
change of scenery.

So our audiences would decidedly prefer to have the _roles_ of _Lady Henry_
and _The Marquise de Rio Zares_ (with her wearisome iteration about "Don
ALVA," and played with rather too much accentuation by Lady MONCKTON)
reduced to the smallest possible algebraic expression. Mr. BANCROFT was the
same _Count Orloff_ as he was years ago on the little stage of the old
Prince of Wales's Theatre; his action more deliberate than when he was
younger and more impetuous; his pauses for meditation longer by a thought
or so than of yore; while in his tone and manner there was just a
delicately-deepened colouring of the genuine original Bancroftian "Old
Master." To Mr. BANCROFT, resuscitating our old courtly friend _Count
Orloff_ (now _Count Orl-on-again_), I would address the once well-known
line from "_Woodman, spare that Tree_"--

"Touch not a single _bow_!"

[Illustration: "Three Men in a boat."]

ARTHUR CECIL, too, as _Baron Stein_, excellent, _cela va sans dire_; yet,
somehow, his effects now seem to me to be laid on with too broad a brush,
especially in the scene of his last appearance, where he makes a sly, and,
for the _Baron Stein_, a rather over-elaborated and farcical attempt to
recapture the let