imperfect, of a public organisation for the English theatre, our stage owes the days of power and greatness which it has enjoyed. So far as we have had a school of great actors, so far as our stage has had tradition, effect, consistency, and a hold on public esteem, it had them under the system of the privileged theatres. The system had its faults, and was abandoned; but then, instead of devising a better plan of public organisation for the English theatre, we gladly took refuge in our favourite doctrines of the mischief of State interference, of the blessedness of leaving every man free to do as he likes, of the impertinence of presuming to check any man's natural taste for the bathos and pressing him to relish the sublime. We left the English theatre to take its chance. Its present impotence is the result.

It seems to me that every one of us is concerned to find a remedy for this melancholy state of things; and that the pleasure we have had in the visit of the French company is barren, unless it leaves us with the impulse to mend the condition of our theatre, and with the lesson how alone it can be rationally attempted. "Forget,"-can we not hear these fine artists saying in an undertone to us, amidst their graceful compliments of adieu ?—"forget your claptrap, and believe that the State, the nation in its collective and corporate character, does well to concern itself about an influence so important to national life and manners as the theatre. Form a

company out of the materials ready to your hand in your many good actors or actors of promise. Give them a theatre at the West End. Let them have a grant from your Science and Art Department; let some intelligent and accomplished man, like our friend Mr. Pigott, your present Examiner of Plays,

be joined to them as Commissioner from the Department, to see that the conditions of the grant are observed. Let the conditions of the grant be that a repertory is agreed upon, taken out of the works of Shakspeare and out of the volumes of the Modern British Drama, and that pieces from this repertory are played a certain number of times in each season; as to new pieces, let your company use its discretion. Let a school of dramatic elocution and declamation be instituted in connection with your company. It may surprise you to hear that elocution and declamation are things to be taught and learnt, and do not come by nature; but it is so. Your best and most serious actors" (this is added with a smile) "would have been better, if in their youth they had learnt elocution. These recommendations, you may think, are not very much; but, as your divine William says, they are enough; they will serve. Try them. When your institution in the West of London has become a success, plant a second of like kind in the East. The people will have the theatre; then make it a good one. Let your two or three chief provincial towns institute, with municipal subsidy and co-operation, theatres such as you institute in the metropolis with State subsidy and co-operation. So you will restore the English theatre. And then a modern drama of your own will also, probably, spring up amongst you, and you will not have to come to us for pieces like Pink Dominoes."

No, and we will hope, too, that the modern English drama, when it comes, may be something different from even the Sphinx and the Demi-Monde. For my part, I have all confidence, that if it ever does come, it will be different and better. But let us not say a word to wound the feelings of those who have given us so much pleasure, and who leave

For

to us as a parting legacy such excellent advice. excellent advice it is, and everything we saw these artists say and do upon the Gaiety stage inculcates it for us, whether they exactly formulated it in words. or no. And still, even now that they are gone, when I pass along the Strand and come opposite to the Gaiety Theatre, I see a fugitive vision of delicate features under a shower of hair and a cloud of lace, and hear the voice of Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt saying in its most caressing tones to the Londoners: "The theatre is irresistible; organise the theatre!"

VII.

COPYRIGHT.

GEORGE SAND died in 1876, and her publisher, Michel Lévy, died the year before, in 1875. In May 1875, just after Michel Lévy's death, Madame Sand wrote a letter in which she renders a tribute of praise and gratitude to the memory of that enterprising, sagacious, and successful man. She describes his character, his habits, his treatment of his authors, his way of doing business, his conception of the book-trade and of its prospects. It was by this conception and by the line which he boldly took in pursuance of it that he was original and remarkable; a main creator, says Madame Sand, of our new modus vivendi in literature; one whose disappearance is not the disappearance of a rich man merely, but of an intellectual force.

The industrial and literary revolution, for which Michel Lévy did so much, may be summed up in two words: cheap books. But by cheap books we are not to understand the hideous and ignoble things with which, under his name, England and America have made us familiar. Cheap books in the revolution of Michel Lévy, were books in the format Charpentier or the format Lévy, books in duodecimo instead of octavo; and costing, in general, two-and-sixpence or three

shillings a volume instead of eight shillings or nine shillings. But they were still books of such an outward form and fashion as to satisfy a decent taste, not to revolt it; books shapely, well printed, well margined; agreeable to look upon and clear to read.

Such as it was, however, the cheapening of their books threw, at first, French authors into alarm. They thought that it threatened their interests. "I remember the time, not so very long ago," says Madame Sand, "when we replied to the publishers who were demonstrating to us what the results of the future would be: Yes, if you succeed, it will be all very well; but if you fail, if, after an immense issue of books, you do not diffuse the taste for reading, then you are lost, and we along with you.' And I urged upon Michel Lévy," she continues, "this objection among others, that frivolous or unhealthy books attracted the masses, to the exclusion of works which are useful and conscientious. He replied to me with that practical intelligence which he possessed in so eminent a degree: 'Possibly, and even probably, it may be so at first. But consider this: that the reading of bad books has inevitably one good result. It inspires a man with the curiosity to read, it gives him the habit of reading, and the habit becomes a necessity. I intend, that, before ten years are over, people shall ask for their book as impatiently as if it were a question of dinner when one is hungry. Food and books, we have to create a state of things when both shall alike be felt as needs; and you will confess then, you writers and artists, that we have solved your problem: Man does not live by bread alone.'

The ten years were not ended before Michel Lévy's authors had to own, says Madame Sand, that their