Who is to blame? The performers only? or is the supply suggested by the demand? If so, the chief culprits are the audience. There will always be authors and actors who will write and play to please the popular taste, as Garrick said, in a prologue written by Johnson, nigh upon one hundred and fifty years ago at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre

"The Drama's laws the Drama's patrons give,
For they, who live to please, must please to live."

The prophets prophesy falsely, because the people love to have it so; and what will ye do in the end thereof?

Plays are good, bad, and indifferent, and so are players, like other men. When I go from Rochester to London, I pass, always with admiration, the beautiful buildings and grounds of Dulwich College, founded some 280 years ago, as an hospital for the succouring of poor old people, and for the education of the young, and endowed with £800 a year, a sum at that date largely munificent, by Edward Alleyn, the actor! the friend of Shakspere and of "rare Ben Jonson," who eulogized him in verse, as Cicero had lauded Roscius and Æsop in prose, declaring that he had excelled them both.

Fuller writes, that there were some of the special Elect who declared that this fair College at Dulwich was built on foundations of sand, being paid for by ill-gotten gains; "but perchance," he adds, "some of them have as bad shillings at the bottom of their own bags, if search were made." There was no hesitation

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in those who denounced the Stage in recommending their needy friends and poor relations to his charity. It pleased Alleyn, in admitting inmates to his hospital and school, to give a preference to those who came from the same parish, St. Botolph, in which he was born, and we find from the papers of the College that one Stephen Gosson, Vicar of that parish, who had been a most bitter opponent of poets, and players, and such like caterpillars of a commonwealth," as he was pleased to term them, was indefatigable in his presentation of candidates. So, some may remember, in Bickerstaffe's play of The Hypocrite, Dr. Cantwell says, "The seeds of wickedness spring up everywhere, but the Playhouse is the devil's hotbed." Colonel Lambert replies, "And yet, doctor, I have known some of the leaders of your tribe, scrupulous as they are, quite willing to gather fruit there for the use of the brethren, -as in the case of a benefit." And then Cantwell out-Stiggins Stiggins, and all who hear must wish that Mr. Weller had him at the horsetrough, "The charity covereth the sin, and it may be lawful to turn the wages of abomination to the comfort of the righteous!"

In more recent, in very recent times, a clergyman was told by one of his parishioners, that, work as hard as he could, he would never succeed so long as he fraternized with a certain member of his congregation, who was a performer in music-halls. The Vicar made

answer, “That beautiful and costly window which has just been placed in our church is his offering: I hope

you will not be the first to cast a stone at it." And I am acquainted with many other instances in which the actor and the actress have shown, not only in gifts to churches, but in practical work and personal visitation, their Christian charity, and have ventured to make, undaunted by the Pharisees, their meek confession of faith.

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What evil propensity could be more at variance with the spirit of this Faith, with the life and the lessons of its Founder, or more ostensibly suggested by the accuser of the brethren," than this indiscriminate condemnation of communities and vocations, high or low? Who art thou that judgest another? and how do you know that, when all the surroundings and temptations are considered, he is not a better man than yourself?

When Mr. Barnum brought his great exhibition to London, I heard one of these captious censors say, "I am told that a distinguished Bishop has invited Barnum to his house, but I cannot believe that the prelate would associate himself with any member of that beery brotherhood." "I can dissolve your doubt," I said, "for I met the Showman at the episcopal table, and he took my wife in to dinner. You will be surprised to hear that he is a pleasant, well-mannered, well-spoken gentleman, and that, so far from being beery, he drinks water only. More than this, he insists that the men in his employment, occupied as they are in perilous exploits, which require all their physical and mental

power, should be specially pledged to temperance; and he told us that there was not a woman in his establishment who had not with her a father, husband, or brother."

The critic listened with an expression of disappointment and incredulity mixed. It is a very severe trial to some to hear the praise of their neighbours. A lady, one of those whom St. Paul describes as wandering about from house to house, and not only idle but tatlers also, and busy-bodies, inquired of a friend of mine, a quaint old Canon in the North, whether he could tell her anything about another lady, a young widow, who had recently taken a house in his parish. "I am afraid," he answered, "that I have no information which you would care to know I have heard nothing of her but good."

I so rarely have the pleasure of seeing a play, that I can tell you little or nothing as to the relative merits of the actors. Beerbohm Tree and Barrett are the tragedians whom I most admire, and Tree's presentation of Hamlet is, me judice, the best which my generation has seen.

XIX.

BORES.

The gnats and wasps of society-The bore selects a subject in which you have no interest-How he defeats your attempts to escape-He must be severely snubbed-Example-The parasite-The pessimist-The malade imaginaire-The man with one idea-The bore epistolary-On board ship-In carriages, doorways, etc.

WHILE I protest against these railing accusations, by which certain classes of the community are consigned to transportation for life, I would as earnestly denounce, and, in each individual and convicted case, condemn to exile or extinction, those bores, and impostors, and otherwise objectionable persons who infest and irritate society, like wasps at a picnic, or mosquitos

"Oft in the stilly night, ere slumber's chain has bound us," or gnats, when we have just made every arrangement to fish in our favourite pool. They must be annihilated (like the wasps) by the sulphurous and tormenting flames of the squib (our fiery indignation), choked (like the mosquito) by the fatal fumes of Keating's