M. One who believes that he will penetrate all the psychology of a character by playing it uninterruptedly, and thus keeping his whole attention fixed on it.

N. Does he expect to be actually transformed into the poet's ideal personage?

M. I suppose so, but it is evidently a futile notion; for even if the nightly repetition of the same words does not dull the actor's appreciation of them, it will injure the voice by whose inflections they are to appeal to the sensibility of the public. Any voice will be damaged by this hard use, for in the constant acting of one part the same set of muscles are continually at work, and they must be strained by the severe task put upon them. When the player finds this to be the case by the hoarseness of certain notes, he will shout in order to hide it from himself and his audience; and in the same way when his mind gets jaded, he will tax all his ingenuity for new effects, and bring trivial details into undue prominence; he will become painfully elaborate.

N. As we, who are usually at variance, meet upon this one point, I conclude that the system we attack is indefensible. But what is the meaning of this vice of managers?

M. Money.

N. Money? I am glad to have extracted so just a reply from you; for I have long thought that this noble art, as you call it, was no less a service of Mammon than stock-jobbing, horse-racing, or any other form of speculation, and I believe in our country it has always been so. But it remains to me to ask why the directors of theatres cannot make their profits coincident with the interests of the public, and give us a variety of entertainment as in bygone days.

M. Not one but many causes are in operation now against this condition, which would be so desirable for the highest aims of the drama. One of these causes is to be found in the splendour of decoration and costume which our nineteenth century audiences require, and which so taxes the treasury of the lessee that he is forced to keep the same piece going through one or two seasons in order to make it pay the expense of its mounting. The large suburban population of London is another incentive to managers to pursue this disastrous fashion. Indeed, it is not enough to say suburban, for railways now bring the whole country to London to see a successful novelty, and till all England has had enough of it, the lessee drives his one admired horse up and down his one high road. If the steed be by chance a Pegasus, why then so much the worse for him. N. You say advisedly his one horse.

M. Yes, for the same circumstances which induce a director to play only one piece prevail with him to engage only one actor, filling up the other parts with untrained third and fourth-rate performers.

The star system and the long-run system are nearly related to each other, and are equally detrimental to dramatic art.

N. It is natural that I, who attach no value whatever to our acted drama, should hear of these things with indifference.

M. I wonder the more at your indifference, because you are a student of poetry, and it is undeniable that our greatest poet would cease to be read by more than a dozen or so of scholars if he were not acted. Only yesterday I met with a striking passage in Paul de Musset's biography of his brother, the poet Alfred, confirming the opinion I have held for long years on this subject. My memory good, and I can quote the passage.

N. Oh don't.

is

M. Yes, listen: 'Le succès du Caprice a été un événement dramatique important, et la vogue extraordinaire de ce petit acte a plus fait pour la réputation de l'auteur que tous ses autres ouvrages. En quelques jours le nom d'Alfred de Musset pénétra dans ces régions moyennes du public où la poésie et les livres n'arrivent jamais et il n'y eut plus de jour où la presse ne citât ses vers.'

N. That would apply more to France than to England, for the real reason that France is more productive in playgoers has to be found in the much smaller proportion of its reading classes. But while you attach so great an importance as you say you do to the influence of the acted drama, I am surprised to see you calmly contemplating the sources of its destruction.

M. My contemplation is not calm.

N. Then why don't you make an effort for your favourite art? M. The only serviceable effort would be a subsidy, and I am not able to subsidise a theatre; considerable capital would be required for that.

N. Is it true that the Français is supported by the government of France ?

M. No, not supported, but assisted by an annual sum which enables the company to bring out pieces in excellent style and to bear occasional periods of unpopularity. The Français has gone through some intervals of depression-one immediately after Rachel's death and one during her lifetime. She was a genius of an avaricious disposition, who encouraged the star system and who frequented foreign lands in quest of gain; but on the whole the Français has maintained a high position, not only as a national institution of France, but as a centre of attraction through a long course of years to artists and amateurs of all countries. The Opéra Comique at Paris, which is also a theatre pensioned by the French government, is remarkable for its well-ordered company and for the care bestowed upon everything it brings out. The Germans subsidise the principal theatres of all their great towns, the money for this purpose being often subscribed by the city corporations. I don't doubt that even

you are aware of the general merit of their representations, especially in the higher drama, whether of Goethe, Schiller, or Shakespeare.

N. I know nothing about it; their museums and picture-galleries have been my places of resort. And now, as it is getting late, please give me my indispensable umbrella, that I may walk forth.

M. Here it is; but won't you come to some conclusion in our argument?

N. The only conclusion you have brought me to concerning the acted drama is this: that there might be more dangerous diversions. M. I want to lead you to another, which is that it must exist. N. Do you undertake to prove that?

M. Our whole life proves it. This amusement is common to all nations, and in some form or other is known even to savage tribes ; you will find it among children in their familiar games, however strictly they may be brought up. I maintain that the entertainment of personation is one of the first instincts of mankind, and that a small number of capable performers, with a larger supply of willing or eager spectators, is one of Nature's most admirable provisions.

N. I don't altogether deny this, though you put it too strongly. M. Admit so much, and you must allow that it is desirable to assist the acted drama by giving an impulse to its best tendencies. N. So long as it is a popular amusement, of course that must be true.

M. Then here we are at one.

N. Yes, for the second time in our long discussion.

M. In this case estimable people ought to make a point of encouraging estimable plays.

N. Yes, and those who consider their good health ought to take a good walk.

M. Very well; and you, as an excellent person, ought to go to an excellent play.

N. No doubt-just hand me my bat; thank you-and if you can discover at any theatre in London a satisfactory drama in course of acting now, which has not gone on without interruption for three seasons, and which can afford us more than one actor worth listening to, I will go to see it with you to-morrow night.

JULIET POLLOCK.

THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE.

How many men and women continue to give a mechanical acquiescence to the creeds, long after they have parted with all definite theology, out of mere clinging to some hope of a future life, in however dim and inarticulate a way! And how many, whose own faith is too evanescent to be put into words, profess a sovereign pity for the practical philosophy wherein there is no place for their particular yearning for a Heaven to come! They imagine themselves to be, by virtue of this very yearning, beings of a superior order, and, as if they inhabited some higher zone amidst the clouds, they flout sober thought as it toils in the plain below; they counsel it to drown itself in sheer despair or take to evil living; they rebuke it with some sonorous household word from the Bible or the poets— 'Eat, drink, for to-morrow ye die '-' Were it not better not to be?' And they assume the question closed, when they have murmured triumphantly, Behind the veil, behind the veil.'

They are right, and they are wrong: right to cling to a hope of something that shall endure beyond the grave; wrong in their rebukes to men who in a different spirit cling to this hope as earnestly as they. We too turn our thoughts to that which is behind the veil. We strive to pierce its secret with eyes, we trust, as eager and as fearless; and even it may be more patient in searching for the realities beyond the gloom. That which shall come after is no less solemn to us than to you. We ask you, therefore, What do you know of it? Tell us; we will tell you what we hope. Let us reason together in sober and precise prose. Why should this great end, staring at all of us along the vista of each human life, be for ever a matter for dithyrambic hypotheses and evasive tropes? What in the language of clear sense does any one of us hope for after death: what precise kind of life, and on what grounds? It is too great a thing to be trusted to poetic ejaculations, to be made a field for Pharisaic scorn. At least be it acknowledged that a man may think of the Soul and of Death and of Future Life in ways strictly positive (that is, without ever quitting the region of evidence), and yet may make the world beyond the grave the centre to himself of moral life. He will give the spiritual life a place as high, and will dwell upon

the promises of that which is after death as confidently as the believers in a celestial resurrection. And he can do this without trusting his all to a perhaps so vague that a spasm of doubt can wreck it, but trusting rather to a mass of solid knowledge, which no man of any school denies to be true so far as it goes.

I.

There ought to be no misunderstanding at the outset as to what we who trust in positive methods mean by the word Soul, or by the words 'spiritual,' 'materialist,' and 'future life.' We certainly would use that ancient and beautiful word Soul, provided there be no misconception involved in its use. We assert as fully as any theologian the supreme importance of spiritual life. We agree with the theologians that there is current a great deal of real materialism, deadening to our higher feeling. And we deplore the too common indifference to the world beyond the grave. And yet we find the centre of our religion and our philosophy in Man and man's Earth.

To follow out this use of old words, and to see that there is no paradox in thus using them, we must go back a little to general principles. The matter turns altogether upon habits of thought. What seems to you so shocking will often seem to us so ennobling, and what seems to us flimsy will often seem to you sublime, simply because our minds have been trained in different logical methods: and hence you will call that a beautiful truth which strikes us as nothing but a random guess. It is idle, of course, to dispute about our respective logical methods, or to pit this habit of mind in a combat with that. But we may understand each other better if we can agree to follow out the moral and religious temper, and learn that it is quite compatible with this or that mental procedure. It may teach us again that ancient truth, how much human nature there is in men; what fellowship there is in our common aspirations and moral forces; how we all live the same spiritual life; whilst the philosophies are but the ceaseless toil of the intellect seeking again and again to explain more clearly that spiritual life, and to furnish it with reasons for the faith that is in it.

This would be no place to expound or to defend the positive method of thought. The question before us is simply, if this positive method has a place in the spiritual world or has anything to say about a future beyond the grave. Suffice it that we mean by the positive method of thought (and we will now use the term in a sense not limited to the social construction of Comte) that method which would base life and conduct, as well as knowledge, upon such evidence as can be referred to logical canons of proof, which would place all that occupies man in a homogeneous system of law. On