tions that might be found in actual life. Now the owner of it would seem to sink below the surface of the sea, where sea-nymphs would exhibit their wondrous treasures; now he would penetrate into the bowels of the mountain, and perceive the gnomes at their fantastic labours; now the hand of Time would for him be turned back, and he would converse with the sages and warriors of antiquity; and a song would swell upon his ears, such as might have been sung in old Hellas. What marvel was it that the poor man loved the dwelling in which such wonder and delight were revealed? Thinkest thou, reader, that what we have written is a phantasy— a short fairy tale? Not at all: we have been narrating a fact of frequent occurrence. The talisman was a book-what is commonly called a 66 book of fiction," nothing more; and the imagination of the poor man, when he read it, was so stimulated, that a number of gorgeous crcations concealed the miseries of actual life.

Ye who inveigh against "fiction," think ye that the world is so beautiful to all its inhabitants that the imagination must be chained and tied down, lest it adorn and beautify it more? Think you that the thing ye call "fact" is so holy that it ought to engross all the faculties of man, and that he may not dream of aught beyond? Truly, it is but to a few that the real beauty of the world is revealed; and even they speak of these revelations either in what you call "fiction," or they are philosophers, such as you style dreamers.

A large class are these dreamers. To feel that one has a power within that can free itself from the power without-to stretch the pinions of the soul, and to shake off the earthy dust that cleaves to them-to assert one's right to be a denizen of a fair country, that the tyrant cannot encircle with walls, nor the bigot defile with hatred ;-this it is to be a dreamer.

We may mourn, now and then, that some of us are awake.

THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA.

THE English mind is a strong digester. It has an amazing power of assimilating science to the national wants. It might have fed the national taste with an equal pabulum of art, had it been left to its own wholesome functions, and not been dosed with

the quackeries of aristocratic Lady Bountifuls, who regard the patient only as a plaything for their own nostrums. But this English mind, healthy as it is in the main, always requires a certain portion of cant by way of seasoning; and the Drama, one, as it should appear, of its supernumerary and useless organs, is almost dead of this unwholesome spicing. The "Decline of the Drama " has been the text of every unwashed enemy of the English Grammar, who calls himself a critic on the strength of being allowed to notice the Thespian Saloon in the "Weekly Halfpenny Universal Gazette." With but few most honourable exceptions, of which the "Times" and the "Examiner" are among the principal, the Drama has indeed been treated by the Press rather as if it were defunct than declining, since it has been delivered over to criticism only fit to bury it. In France those who presume to sit in judgment on Dramatic Art make at least some study of their calling. They are venal to an extent of impudence that would hardly be credited among us; they sell their advocacy for hard cash in its most undisguised shape, and proportion their praise by a very accurate tariff; but they are not ignorant or incapable; and as, by the success of merit, they are generally fee'd on the right side, they often write articles which may be read for information as for amusement. They have a value for their calling, if it be only in the price it fetches them; and something even of reverence for an art upon which their parasitical existence depends. They may ill-treat individuals, but they never abuse the Drama, or help to murder it by declaring that it is expiring. They are not the gentlemen who "do" a great many odds and ends in the newspaper beside, and the public into the bargain.

The rewards of those who make the Drama have declined, and with them, in this land of money-valuation, the consideration of the makers. Other pursuits, other branches of literature itself, have proved more profitable, and above all have been exercised with what an author always covets most-with certainty and with independence. But let any one take up the list of those who have tried and succeeded in the Drama within the last quarter of a century; let these men and their works be examined, from Sheil and Knowles to the last worthy aspirant, the unproclaimed author of "The Florentines" at Sadler's Wells. We say, the men, for many who have chosen this path for the display of their genius have been driven from it by the misrule of the stage; and, having proved their fitness for this great art, have abandoned it in disgust, and brought their mature strength to bear upon other less ingrate

ful pursuits. The barren misgovernment of the theatre has turned many of its highest ornaments into essayists and politicians, and its dearth of encouragement has driven out colonies to create periodicals which supply the place of the Drama in the popular mind; furnishing the very kind of instruction and delight which the Stage used to afford. But take the list of what has been done, in despite of wrong and of the warning of those who have experienced it, by those young in the art, who have just felt their way with a play or two, and have never been allowed to ripen into practised authors. Put that list, especially if we may add to it the works of such men as Knowles, who, acting up to the instinct of a dramatic nature, or bound by the habit of dramatic thought, could not abandon the calling for which they were designed: put that against the list of baby-babblings which the burlesque called Tragic Drama of the previous century will present. Take the number and the quality of the readable plays of the quarter of an age against those of the previous full hundred years. You will have to make one brilliant exception-Sheridan-in one peculiar style of artificial Comedy; but for the rest, the wit, wisdom, thought and eloquence, the delineation of human nature as a portrait, not as a caricature,—our discouraged candidates, are giants to ricketty pigmies. Our unacted Drama, with its somewhat inflated pretensions, but very worthy ambition, would be most shamefully libelled were any kind of comparison instituted between it and the acted, praised, successful, well-paid Tragedies of the Hall Hertsons, the "Countess of Salisburys," and other monsters admired in the age gone by. These "unacted" do not always apply their strength ably to dramatic purposes, but they give evidence of it even in its misapplication. The muscle is in the arm, though the blow does not always fall in the right place. They are often misled, for instance, by the great power of single phrases in their predecessors,-gems set in all the brilliant display of great situations, and they put their faith in the word without the act. But this is not the place to enlarge upon their errors. It is something that they can be consistently criticised; no such operation can be performed upon the great bulk of their predecessors.

Many of the higher intellects have been so soon driven from the production of Dramas as a calling, that they have felt no interest in answering detractors; and by a very natural spleen, some of the wickedest jeerers at "the Decline of the Drama " have been found among the abler dramatists themselves.

If then, while we declare that the Drama has not declined in its

highest branch-that of original authorship; if we maintain that it has greatly and nobly advanced under discouragement, we are equally bound to declare that its position might and would have been much worthier but for its discouragements: the purpose of this paper is to show what these discouragements really are. We have said a word of the half effete, half blustering criticism,-a make-weight among other minor outlays, with the majority of our journals, as authorship itself was classed along with coals and such sundries by the management of Covent Garden theatre, when it explained its accounts to the committee of the House of Commons. Let us turn to the habits of the people.

We become daily more sensitive and effeminate. Our pleasures must come to us at home: we cannot endure the trouble, the exposure to change of atmosphere, which would be incurred in seeking them abroad. Our easy-chairs, our evening's quiet, the digestion of a late dinner, are matters of more concern. Shakspeare's plays were acted in his own age not at night, but in the afternoon the mid-day repast never interfered with the halfholiday. Where are half-holidays now? Business-the steamengine rack of employment-the work that must be done to live, and the vanity that makes it an equal necessity that we should live like our richer neighbours-take the day for hard, unremitting toil, and force us to steal recreation from the night. Whoever reads a Continental Tour, from the note-book of a walking journey, to the history of a royal progress, that does not wonder at the happy leisure that runs through the story? Our over-work has changed the class of our popular Dramas. The very weary need excitement. Those who have been long severely employed require mere humour-fun, as coarse as it may be; but palpable, effective fun, exacting no thought to enjoy it. Such a taste, called forth by so strong a necessity, is an unconquerable enemy. Intellect may have its tens, but mere mirth will have its thousands. And this hard work has fallen hardest upon those who are, by long prescription, the best judges and patrons of the stagethe lawyers. Their profession is among the most toilsome, and the eminent among them almost always add the ambition of further occupation by a seat in Parliament. They do their law-expounding by day and their law-making by night; reminding one of Mrs. Gamp, who does not wear out the whole twenty-four hours in one place, but refreshes herself by adjourning from a day job to a night one. It is almost a just retribution that they should be the foremost

victims of their own system; for the lateness of parliamentary hours, occasioned principally to suit their opportunities, has certainly been the means of cursing the community at large with this unwholesome plague. As to its effect on the Drama, it is clear that, though the Stage may have occasional audiences for great occasions, it utterly prevents our being a dramatic people.

The taste for novels and romances, which, from Sir Walter Scott's time to these days of Dickens, has been counted among the antagonists of the Stage, has, in reality, been rather created by the home habits which our hours, occupations, and variable climate impose upon us, than creative of them. And the way in which the theatres have exhibited disjointed scraps, rather than entire skeletons of such works, and competed with each other in producing tableaux vivans, selected from works whose real power is in their sentiments; the audiences which have been constantly drawn by this very lowest class of exhibitions-this Plumptre perversion of the uses of the Stage-show that the direction of the Drama has been a weaker thing, clinging for support to whatever has robust vitality, however it must force its own growth to catch at its prop. The Christmas Carol," "The Chimes," "The Caudle Lectures," are wrenched and wrested from their original purpose, and stolen to be applied to uses for which they are utterly unfit. The men are alive whose spirit breathes in these works, and who could clothe it directly in the dramatic form; but directors of the British Stage consider it cheaper to steal what is shapeless, and to hew it out unfashionably, than to pay for what is just and appropriate. They love penny speculations and cheap makeshifts; and if they had to build St. Peter's, would try hard to do it with old canvas and wicker-work.

Again, the Drama has to contend with the aristocratic, exclusive spirit. The theatres were, till lately, afflicted with a monopolist management, conducted by this class. This dilettanti meddling has done mischief which it will require years of exertion to repair. Arts are perhaps in one sense the handmaidens of pleasure, and they are so far the subjects of caprice; but if these works be but toys when complete, they demand serious application and well-educated skill in the workmanship. Their fitting and

fashioning cannot be done by whim and guess-work, or even the poorest baubles will fail of their humble purpose. And besides, these amateur masters are for making all their efforts in the shape of worthless playthings; they come into the trade with the most