original idea of his heroines; not going, as some have supposed, beyond his conceptions, but understanding and realising them with a more powerful and natural execution. This is the task for the ambition of actors: to despise it is only to fall short of it.

These observations would, in ordinary times, be perhaps a mere waste of words; but if the Drama be worth preserving in the country which is so honoured by what it has produced in this art; if we are alive to the appreciation we have hardly and lately won in Europe for our greatest masters; then we may remember that the fate of this art is in its very crisis, and we may be pardoned for seeking to bring that crisis to a happy issue. The old monopoly of sheer incompetency is cast down. We must not despair if it should take years to restore what that has destroyed. We have almost to create true taste anew. Look to the past, and we shall find the stage itself honoured, when a Shakspeare, a Molière, a Voltaire, were its masters. Actors may illustrate what is past; but if the Drama-that is, the story of the feelings of the age put in that vivid form-be to be perpetuated, that must be done by the creative faculty of the author. It is the architect who must furnish the plan. The mason, and even the sculptor, must follow it. The government may lend no aid, the public may take no interest, the Stage may have closed its glories among us. So let it be. But do not let those taunt authors with the "Decline of the Drama,' where it is not, whose own faults and negligences show plainly enough where it is.

SONNET.

WHEN on the quiet of my lonely hours,
Some softly whispering inspiration steals;
Am I less blest than he whose spirit feels
The deepest movings of the Muse's powers?
Nay. For the sunlight that gilds up the towers
Of princes-in the sheltered lane reveals
The beauty of the primrose,—and unseals
Phials of fragrance in the violet's bowers.
For Poetry can glad, illume, sustain,
And dignify the humblest heart she sways:
And though the world the trifles may disdain,
Still dear unto the Poet are his lays.
And whoso seeketh shall not seek in vain,
For joys abundant in her pleasant ways.

H. F. L.

THE EGOTISM OF ARISTOCRACY.

In all old plays-turning upon the fate of empires, and the rise and fall of monarchs-glittering with the gorgeousness of courts, and thrones and sceptres-taking no heed but of royal griefs and joys-imperial in all their changing features and fortunes-in such plays you will, in almost every page, come upon the stage direction, "Flourish of trumpets. Enter (or exit) the king." And we have heard the flourish as well as read it. Who has not listened to the time-honoured fanfaronnade; the clang of ringing brazen horns, which, just as the prompter's whistle is silent, and the new scene-the canvass battlements, or the pasteboard Gothic hall, unfolds its scenic glories to the audience,-resounds from the orchestra, the warning note that the monarch, the hero of the play. or the monarch's wife, the heroine, with all his or her courtiers, and pages, and waiting ladies, gold sticks and silver sticks, and sticks of all descriptions, are about to defile majestically upon the stage, a blaze of crowns, and stars, and spangles!

Well do we recollect our boyish notion of the dignity of kings; our persuasion, gleaned probably from the stage custom that monarchs, princes, and emperors, never moved from one room to another in their glorious palaces-never sat down on their thrones, or indeed, for all we knew, their easy chairs, without a ringing trumpet blast, proclaiming the mighty fact to a listening world. Ordinary men, of course, might come into the world, do great things in it, nobly and heroically leave it better than they found it; but there was no trumpet blown for them. They might suffer or achieve in silence; but a king-Lord help us--it would be unpardonable were he to be allowed to pass from his diningroom to his drawing-room, or his drawing-room to his bed-room, without musical honours to record the exploit.

And we were not so far wrong after all in our notions of the manners and customs of kings. The trumpet is still blown in mock courts; but loud as may be its brazen voice, it is but a whisper to the trumpet which is day by day sounded in real ones. The veritable old tube might ring through corridor and hall, and room of state, prating of royal whereabouts from fosse to battle

ment of kingly castle; but now there is blown an instrument which scatters over cities and kingdoms the vast news with which it is charged; which flings its echoes into far-off lands; which crosses mountains and oceans, and makes the civilised world musical with its tale.

The Court Circular is the trumpet, and the press is the trumpeter.

The news which the instructed ear might gather from the horn's tantarara is now to be gleaned from the courtly missive scattered so profusely over the land. The great fact of a monarch having walked in a garden, or a prince having mounted a horse, is now chronicled in black and white; certainly an improvement over the more vague announcement which music could make of the mighty occurrence; and as the message is more sure of being rightly interpreted, so it is of being more widely diffused. The trumpet was once very puissant. Its echoes rung far. The press is more puissant still; its influence extends further. Pity that the press should take to itself the mission of the trumpet.

Now, in the name of common sense, what has the great world to do with how royalty eats its dinner, or adjusts its night-cap? Kings and queens are no doubt great people, but they are not so mighty and so sacred; not such extraordinary rarities, that we must know as important pieces of intelligence, whether they walk before luncheon or ride after dinner. But it seems they do not think so. The days when they did great things are gone bythey do not attempt to immortalise themselves now-a-day's by despoiling their subjects or converting personal piques with each other into national wars. The ages when they did and could do all this have passed away; the greatest of their doings now-adays is to migrate from one palace to another to preside one day at a concert-to dance another at a ball. But still all the fussy importance, nay, much more than the fussy importance of the days when their motions were really of importance, is to be kept up. Once upon a time, the progress of a monarch was a very interesting matter to many of his dutiful subjects. It might involve considerations connected, for example, with Jewish teeth. A Court Circular in the time of Richard the Second would have been of some advantage to the Israelites, as it might have afforded them valuable hints when to get out of the way. But now, really Isaac of York, did he live, would not have the slightest cause to dread a royal progress through the northern portions of the

monarch's dominions. Court Circulars then not having been published when they would have been useful, are by that peculiar sense of the fitness of things which generally characterises a court, immediately set on foot when they tell nothing that the world cares to know.

The hour at which royalty rose, the time at which royalty walked, the precise moment when royalty dined, the room in which the awful event took place, the pieces of music which celebrated the occasion, the names of the great who had the honour of eating French dishes and drinking Rhenish wine with royalty; do our masses wish to know aught of these? Are such the items of information which we can look complacently upon among intimations of the rise of new, or the fall of old kingdoms; the changes of government, the great social shiftings of the world?

We are perhaps in error. It is possible that though the royal bill of fare might be passed unread, the bill of the company might be glanced at. Royalty no doubt would think it a great honour conferred upon literary and scientific men, were they admitted to the august table. In this we humbly differ from royalty; but at the same time we could understand, and we could appreciate that, with such feelings, there would be grace and propriety in distinguished men being bid to palace dinners. But even if no honour was thereby conferred upon them, there would at least be the will to make up for the deed. But do names deathless in the history of our literature, our arts, and our science, ever flourish in Court Circulars? Do poets and romancists, engineers and chemists, historians and dramatists, actors or artists, jostle with dukes and earls, and viscounts and baronets? Wade through the Court Circular for months, and you will find that the only recognised title to quasi distinction is that born with a man, not won by him; that the "illustrious circle" is made up of English aristocrats, some with broad acres and narrow minds, and German princes with names and titles, which fill up paragraphs of hard words, and kingdoms, and principalities, about as big as so many Hydeparks. The only historian which the court favours, is the modern Herodotus who records its doings. But even he may be penning lessons he wits not of. "History," said an eloquent man,

is philosophy teaching by example." Heaven knows that we have many an example of the folly of keeping up courts, in the history of their doings. Perhaps one day the lesson will be learned, and when learned acted upon?

But royalty is not the only monster egotist of the day. Beneath the Court Circular in our newspapers are to be found a great many West-end circulars-emanating from divers subject-held courts in May-fair and other similarly favoured regions. Each of our aristocrats blows a mimic trumpet. True-we have not reached the acme of degradation, in having the intelligence crammed down our throats, that the Duke of Sillyton walked yesterday in Kensington-gardens, or that the Marchioness of Humdrumderry took an airing in an open barouche and four. The actual detail of the every-day movements of the aristocracy is not yet foisted upon us through the newspapers; but do they step a moment aside of their beaten track of life-do they give a fête—a ball—a rout —a dinner—a matinée musicale or a soirée dansante (the fashionable rather than the French for a morning concert, and an evening dancing party); do any of these events take place ?-some minor Court Circular man-some butler's pantry historian-rushes into print, that not a crumb of the mighty intelligence may be lost to the open-mouthed world, which must of course be so eager to devour it. The Court Circular is the grand leviathan of West-end literature: the fashionable paragraph, the lighter, the more occasional contribution to the valuable library.

Dinners and balls in fashionable squares and streets, are no doubt deemed by their givers matters as important for the world to have right information upon, as are the ordinary parties at the palace. It is obvious that in the event of a "marriage in high life," a description of the trousseau of the "lovely and accomplished bride" (it being the peculiarity of all women in high life to be lovely and accomplished, at least by their own historians' accounts) must be duly published for the edification of both hemispheres. Who so dull and low-lived as to be uninterested in the grand point, of whether a haughty dame wore diamonds in her hair, or ostrich feathers-rustled in satins, or bestowed additional attraction upon point-lace? Must we not know what plate stood upon the table; in which chamber of state, the blue or the yellow, the banquet was served? Again, in our recollections of the theatre, does it not give new piquancy to the wit we still feel sparkling in the atmosphere, when we find, from the next morning's paper, that three dukes and an earl shared it with us over-night? It is a great privilege to hear Shakspeare-but to hear Shakspeare in such company is it not overpowering? And think of the dramatist too. When he elaborated his scenes; when, happy and triumphant, he poured forth page after page of wit and wis