tempts so frequently made to increase the interest of the work performed by introducing realistic or absolutely real accessories. The original stage Pegasus may perhaps have learned to deport himself in a becoming manner; and it has been seen that precautions were taken toward that end. But the live goat in "Dinorah" always misbehaved himself until, ultimately, at the Royal Italian Opera, Madame Adelina Patti found herself obliged to discard her unruly pet, and to sing Dinorah's charming cradle-song either to a purely imaginary animal or to a stuffed figure.

At a Paris theatre an attempt was once made to give reality to a pastoral scene by bringing on to the stage a flock of live sheep, which, however, frightened by the lights and by the clamor of the audience, lost no time in going astray, so that at the second representation it was found necessary to replace the live sheep by pasteboard imitations.

The insufficiency of the stage-arrangements at the Paris Opera, when Rousseau was expatiating on the artistic poverty of that establishment, may be explained in some measure not only by the smallness of the stage, but by the manner in which it was blocked up on both sides by the aristocratic section of the audience, who sat in rows on both sides of the singers, while the baser portion of the public stood in the pit, which, until a comparatively late period, was unprovided with seats. Often the occupants of the benches on the stage took quite a different view of the representation to that formed by the upstanding spectators in the parterre; and ideas were some times exchanged between the two great divisions of the public with an irritating effect, and with results which sometimes took the form of open violence. The actor or singer, under this absurd arrangement, stood in the midst of his audience; and when, as sometimes happened, the remarks made by those on the stage induced him to turn round, he was accused of showing disrespect to the public in front of the orchestra. At times, under this arrangement, a piece was hissed by one division, applauded by the other; it was not always the aristocratic section which allowed itself in the right. "Le Grondeur," by Brueys and Palaparet, was received with hisses from the stage, with applause from the pit. Molière's "Ecole des Femmes," which delighted the pit, found no favor in the eyes of the too fastidious, but not sufficiently intelligent, patrons of the seats on the stage, one of whom, at each fresh burst of laughter, is said to have exclaimed, with a shrug of the shoulders: "Laugh away! laugh away! you fools in the pit!"

The benches on the stage of the Paris Opera were abolished, at the instance of the Count de Lauraguais, who, it has been surmised, may have felt annoyed at Sophie Arnould's being stared at,

and spoken to by the frequenters of these seats. This munificent patron of operatic art—and of operatic artists-paid, in any case, a sum of twelve thousand livres, by way of compensation, for the loss sustained by the theatre in consenting to the abolition of the banquettes.

At our English theatres the spectators who were allowed to take seats on the stage did not, as in France, place themselves prominently before the public. The practice, however, of admitting so many visitors behind the scenes, and of allowing them to remain on the stage while the performance was actually going on, could not but be attended with many inconveniences, one of which is mentioned by Mrs. Bellamy in a wellknown passage of her memoirs. A Mr. St. Leger, as Mrs. Bellamy passed before him on the stage at Dublin, kissed her on the neck, and received a box on the ears in return. Lord Chesterfield rose in his box and applauded. His example was followed by the whole house; and, at the end of the act, Major Macartney, deputed by the Viceroy, waited on Mr. St. Leger, and requested him to make a public apology. This incident had an important effect in bringing about a reform which had long been advocated.

Many reforms or innovations, supposed to be of the present day, are but returns to ancient practices. There is much in Herr Wagner's musical system-including the use of horses on the stage-which is not by any means so new as is generally supposed. There was novelty at one time in bringing the orchestra before the public, instead of keeping it out of sight, as was done in the early days of the drama, and quite lately at the Wagner festival of Baireuth. The custom, too, adopted at Baireuth, of proclaiming the approaching representation by sound of trumpet, though apparently new in the present day, is not so new as the system of distributing programmes, which dates only from the time of Dryden. In France the custom of naming the artists in the bills of the performance is still more modern, being not quite a hundred years old. On the 9th of September, 1779, the actors of Paris held a meeting, at which they adopted a petition, begging the Mayor of Paris not to force them to print their names on the programmes. It was held by the profession to be for the advantage of theatres generally that singers and actors should remain anonymous; for if, in an important part, a favorite artist was to be replaced on a given evening by an artist of no great popularity, the public, it was argued, would not be prevented by such a substitution from attending. It was not until 1791 that the Paris Opera adopted the custom of announcing the performers' names. However the general interests of the stage may have been affected, it can scarcely be said that artists,

as individuals, suffered from this change; for under the old system they were frequently hissed, not by reason of their own incapacity alone, but because the public was disappointed at finding them "cast" for parts in which it had expected to meet actors of greater popularity.

On one occasion, an irritated amateur rushed from the Paris Opera-House, and began to beat an unfortunate ticket-seller from whom he had purchased his place. The cause of the gentleman's anger was at once understood.

"Est-ce que je savais qu'on lâcherait le Poutheien?" cried the ticket-seller; for it was the singing of Poutheien which had excited the opera-goer's wrath.

Talking of hisses, I may here mention that an actress of ability in her time, Mrs. Farrel, after being hissed in the part of Zaira, the heroine of "The Mourning Bride," especially in the dying scene, rose from the stage, and, advancing toward the footlights, expressed her regret at not having merited the applause of the audience, and explained that, having accepted the part only to oblige a friend, she hoped she would be excused for not playing it better. After this little speech, she assumed once more a recumbent position, and was covered by the attendants with a black veil.

Such incidents as the one narrated by Mrs. Bellamy were doubtless of frequent occurrence at the French theatres. Not that they always took so serious a turn. On one occasion a dancer was listening to the protestations of an elderly lover, who was on the point even of kissing her hand, when as he stooped down his wig caught in the spangles of her dress. At that moment she had to appear on the stage, and did so amid general laughter and applause; for she carried with her the old beau's wig, or scalp, as if by way of trophy. The applause was renewed when a bald head was seen projecting from the wing in search of its artificial covering. Stories, too, are told of imprudent admirers, who, after exciting the jealousy of a machinist or "carpenter," did not take the precaution to avoid traps, and, as a natural consequence, found themselves, at the first opportunity, shot up to the ceiling, or sunk to the lowest depths beneath the stage.

The abolition of the banquettes at the Paris Opera-House, though due in one sense to the Count de Lauraguais, as already mentioned, may be attributed also to the representations made on the subject by the actor Lekain, who played, moreover, an important part in connection with the reform of scenery, of costume, and of stage accessories generally.

Molière, in the opening scene of "Les Fâcheux," and Voltaire, in several of his works, ridiculed the custom of allowing spectators to take their places on the stage. The actors can

not but have known this practice to be absurd, and in an artistic point of view most injurious. It may be doubted, indeed, whether the French would for so many centuries have respected the least respectable of the three unities, that of place, had they not been absolutely forced to do so by the conditions under which their actors performed, and by the absolute impossibility with a narrow and crowded stage of changing the scene.

Although the honor of reforming stage costume to the extent at least of doing away with flagrant anachronisms in dress-is claimed for Lekain, it was not to a great tragedian, but to a very distinguished ballet-dancer that this reform was really due. In the early part of the eighteenth century, Roman, Greek, and Assyrian warriors appeared on the French stage in a conventional military costume, which seemed to be considered suitable to warriors of all nations and of all ages. The dress consisted of a belaced and beribboned tunic, surmounted by a cuirass, and of a powdered wig, with tails a yard long, over which was worn a plumed helmet.

Mademoiselle Sallé, the ballerina, who first undertook the herculean task of rendering stage costume reasonable and natural, proposed, in defiance of the prevailing custom, to give to each person in a ballet, or other dramatic work, the dress of the country and period to which the subject belonged. Mademoiselle Sallé was a friend of Voltaire, who celebrated her in an appropriate verse; and she carried with her, in 1734, when she visited London, a letter of introduction from Fontenelle to Montesquieu. Appearing at Covent Garden Theatre, in a ballet of her own composition, on the subject of "Pygmalion and Galatea," Mademoiselle Sallé dressed the part of Galatea not in the Louis Quinze style, nor in a Polish costume, such as was afterward adopted for this character at the Paris Opera-House, but in drapery imitated as closely as possible from the statues of antiquity. It was announced on the occasion of mademoiselle's benefit at Covent Garden that "servants would be permitted to keep places on the stage." This, however, was an exceptional arrangement. Endeavors were already being made in England to confine theatre-goers to their proper places in the front of the house; and on many of the play-bills of this period the following notification appears: "It is desired that no person will take it ill their not being admitted behind the scenes, it being impossible to perform the entertainment unless these passages are kept clear."

Strange mistakes sometimes arose from the author's name not being announced. At the first performance of the tragedy of "Statira," Pradon, the writer of that work, took his place among the audience to judge freely of its effect. The

first act was a good deal hissed, and Pradon was about to protest, when a friend whispered to him not to make himself known, but in order to conceal his identity to hiss like the others. Pradon hissed, when a mousquetaire at his side asked him why he hissed a piece that was excellent, and the work of a man who held a distinguished position at court. Pradon, annoyed at his neighbor's interference, replied that he should hiss if he thought fit. The mousquetaire knocked his hat off. Pradon struck the mousquetaire, and receiving a severe beating in return, left the theatre, insulted and injured, but not mortally hurt.

A tragedy, in six acts, by M. de Beausobre, called "Les Arsacides,” had been formally accepted at the Comédie Française by some mistake. A large sum of money was offered to the author on condition of his withdrawing the work; but it had taken him thirty years to write the piece; he was now sixty years of age, and he was resolved to see it played. The tragedy was hissed from beginning to end. The actors wished to finish the performance at the end of the second act; but the public were so amused that they insisted on hearing the whole. The next day the author went to the theatre, and assured the actors that if they would give him one more rehearsal, and, above all, would allow him to add a seventh act, the work would have a glorious success. They prevailed upon him to accept an indemnity, and the piece was not played again.

The story is perhaps sufficiently well known of the celebrated English actor, Powell, who sought in vain one night for a supernumerary named Warren, who dressed him, but who on this occasion had undertaken to play the part of Lothario's corpse in "The Fair Penitent." Powell, who took the principal character, called out in an angry tone for Warren, who could not help raising his head from out of the coffin, and replying, "Here, sir." "Come, then," continued Powell, not knowing where the voice came from, "or I'll break every bone in your body!" Warren, believing his master to be quite capable of carrying out his threat, sprang in his fright out of the coffin, and ran in his winding-sheet across the stage.

Our dying heroes and heroines in the present day wait to regain animation until the curtain has fallen. Unless, however, they are supposed to be dead, they reappear in their own private character at the end of each dramatic scene which happens to have procured for them marked approbation. A distinguished tenor, the late Signor Giuglini, being much applauded one night for his singing in the Miserere scene of "Il Trovatore," quitted the dungeon in which Manrico is supposed to be confined, came forward to the public, bowed, and then, not to cheat the executioner, went calmly back to prison.

A much more modern story of the confusion of facts with appearances is told, and with truth, of a distinguished military amateur, who had undertaken, for one occasion only, to play the part of "Don Giovanni." In the scene in which the profligate hero is seized and carried down to the infernal regions, the principal character could neither persuade nor compel the demons, who were represented by private soldiers, to lay hands on one whom, whatever part he might temporarily assume, they knew well to be a colonel in the army. The demons kept at a respectful distance, and, when ordered in a loud whisper to lay hands on their dramatic victim, contented themselves with falling into an attitude of attention.

Jules Janin, in the collection of his feuilletons published under the title of "Histoire de la Littérature Dramatique," tells how in the ultra-tragic tragedy of "Tragadalbas," an actor, in the midst of a solemn tirade, let a set of false teeth fall from his mouth. This was nothing more or less than an accident which might happen to any one. Lord Brougham is said to have suffered the same misfortune while speaking in the House of Lords. But the great tragedian showed great presence of mind, and also a certain indifference to the serious nature of the work in which he was engaged, when he coolly stooped down, picked up the teeth, replaced them between his jaws, and continued his speech.

At some French provincial theatre, where a piece was being played in which the principal character was that of a blind man, the actor to whom this part had been assigned was unwell, and it seemed necessary to call upon another member of the company to read the part. Thus the strange spectacle was witnessed of a man supposed to be totally blind, who read every word he uttered from a paper he carried in his hand.

At an English performance of "William Tell," the traditional arrow, instead of going straight from Tell's bow to the heart-perforated beforehand-of the apple placed on the head of Tell's son, stopped half way on the wire along which it should have traveled to its destination.

Everything, however, succeeded in Rossini's "William Tell," except the apple incident, as everything failed in Dennis's "Appius," except that thunder which Dennis recognized and claimed as his own when he heard it a few nights afterward in "Macbeth." Yet it has never been very difficult to represent thunder on the stage. One of the oldest theatrical anecdotes is that of the actor, who, playing the part of a bear, hears a clap of stage-thunder, and mistaking it for the real thing, makes the sign of the cross.

H. SUTHERLAND EDWARDS (Macmillan's Magazine).

SOME FORGOTTEN ASPECTS OF THE IRISH QUESTION.

IT

T may be pleaded, and generally is pleaded, on behalf of the British Parliament, that it has gradually undone the wrongs of centuries, and has at last placed the people of Ireland on a footing of perfect equality with the people of England. But the mere undoing of a wrong does not always place the injured person on an equality with those who have not been wronged. The sovereign's "pardon" does not necessarily place the innocent convict where he was before. His health may have been ruined meanwhile, or his business, or both. In equity, therefore, if not in strict law, he has exceptional claims on the consideration and sympathy of the Government which did him wrong. . . . The conduct of England in the past goes far to explain the present condition of Ireland. If that conduct has been exceptional in the highest degree, the Irish may be less unreasonable than is generally supposed in demanding some exceptional remedies.

It is popularly supposed that the special illtreatment of Ireland by England began at the time of the Reformation. Undoubtedly the Reformation introduced a new element of discord by adding to the antipathy of race the more potent and more bitter antipathy of religion-the religion of a handful of English officials in Dublin imposed upon the Irish nation by the Mussulman argument of the sword. Before the Reformation the Irish nation was outlawed for the crime of being Irish. At the Reformation it was outlawed anew for the additional crime of being "Papist." But to say that the Irish were outlawed by England may appear to some an exaggerated statement. It is, however, the literal fact. The truth is, that England found the conquest of Ireland a much more difficult matter than it had bargained for. If the Irish had been united politically under one head, one of two results must have followed-either the English invaders would have been driven out of the country, or the Irish would have submitted after a few decisive defeats. But the ancient Irish were broken up into a number of separate tribes, owing collectively no allegiance to any one single chief. This made it impossible, without a military occupation of the whole country, to subdue and rule them in the mass; and a military occupation of the whole country was impossible. Political organizations are in this respect like animal organizations.

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When they are highly developed you can deal with them as individual entities whose power of resistance is destroyed when you have cut off or overcome the head. In low organizations, on the other hand, to divide is simply to multiply the centers of life and of resistance. Ireland was politically in this undeveloped condition at the time of Strongbow's invasion. No victory, however decisive on the spot, sufficed to crush the resistance of the population at large, because the population at large acknowledged no single head. Dispersed at one place, they suddenly attacked at another. Harassed and exasperated by this style of warfare, the English seem to have conceived the idea of exterminating the large majority of the native population. The atrocious laws decreed against them hardly admit of any other interpretation. The Irish were, simply as Irish, placed outside the protection of the law, and were treated as vermin. Submission to English rule did not bring with it the correlative privileges of an English subject. To kill an Irishman was no murder. To break a contract with him was no wrong. He could not sue in the English courts. The slaughter of the Irish and the seizure of their property were acts rewarded by the Government." There was no restraint on the greed and cruelty of the oppressor, except the fear of retaliation. “A common defense in charges of murder was that the murdered man was of the mere Irish.'" To escape from this cruel bondage the Irish repeatedly petitioned for admission to the benefits of English law, and were always refused. Such was the condition of the Irish beyond the Pale. Nor was the lot even of those who lived within it an enviable one. The degree of protection which submission to English rule afforded them may be tested by a statute of 1465, which decreed that any person going to rob or steal, having no faithful man of good name or fame in his company in English apparel," might be killed by the first man who met him. This placed the life of every Irish man and Irish woman within the Pale at the disposal of any Englishman who might feel tempted to indulge his passions.

But it is right to record even small mercies, and therefore I hasten to add that the brutality of this law was somewhat mitigated by a subsequent statute which directed the Irish within the Pale to wear English apparel.

Such, however, was the fascination of the Irish character, stimulated here and there, perhaps, by sympathy with undeserved wrongs or

by love of adventure and a wild life, that Englishmen were allured across the Pale in consider able numbers. These became proverbially "more Irish than the Irish." They learned the language, adopted the costume, imbibed the manners, and got infected with the wit of the subject race. If this process of amalgamation had been allowed to go on unchecked, Ireland would probably have had a different history. But it was arrested inside the Pale by the Reformation; outside the Pale by the statutes of Kilkenny. By these statutes an impassable gulf was dug between the two races. To intermarry with the Irish, or indeed to form any sort of connection with them, was a capital crime. It was also made highly penal to present an Irishman to an ecclesiastical benefice, or to grant the rites of hospitality to an Irish bard or story-teller. Yet the result of it all was that when Henry VIII. quarreled with the Pope, and thus added the bitterness of religious persecution to the hatred already engendered by English tyranny, the area of English rule was contracted within a compass of twenty miles.

Till then the extermination of the Irish, though aimed at in various acts, was never openly recommended by English officials. It was left to Protestant zeal to stain the English name with this infamy. The poet Spenser calmly contemplates the extermination of the Irish as the surest method of making an "Hibernia Pacata." After describing in pathetic terms the desolation of Munster by the ruthless soldiers of Elizabeth, he observes: "The end will (I assure me) be very short, and much sooner than it can be in so great a trouble, as it seemeth, hoped for; although there should be none of them fall by the sword nor be slain by the soldier, yet thus being kept from manurance and their cattle from running abroad, they would quickly consume them

selves and devour one another."

This horrible anticipation was, in fact, literally fulfilled, both in Elizabeth's reign and on several subsequent occasions. In the reign of James I., for example, Sir Arthur Chichester reported that he had found Ulster " abounding with houses, corn, cattle, and a people who had been bred up in arms" and were highly prosperous. But they were Roman Catholics, and must make room for Protestants. Accordingly, this militant propagandist left the country "desolate and waste, and the people upon it enjoying nothing but as fugitives, and what they obtained by stealth." But the sword and torch were too slow as instruments of destruction, or perhaps too expensive. At all events, Chichester agrees with Spenser in putting his trust mainly in famine. "I have often said and written, it is famine that must consume the Irish, as our swords and other endeavors work not that speedy effect which is expected. Hun

ger would be a better, because a speedier, weapon to employ against them than the sword." This barbarous policy succeeded too well. Pestilence and famine committed frightful havoc among those who had escaped the sword and fire. Starving children were to be seen feeding in the silent streets on the corpses of their parents, and even the graves were rifled to appease the pangs of hunger. And these horrors went on, not during one or two years, but at intervals extending over generations. According to Sir William Petty's calculation, no fewer than five hundred and four thousand of the native Irish perished, out of a total population of one million four hundred and sixty-six thousand, in the eleven years of the war following the rebellion of the Irish in 1641—a rebellion of which Burke says, “No history that I have ever read furnishes an instance of any that was so provoked." "Figures, however," says Mr. McLennan, in his most interesting and instructive "Memoir of Thomas Drummond," "convey but a poor notion of the state to which the country was reduced. Famine, as at the end of the Elizabethan wars, stepped in to complete the havoc of the sword. A plague followed. Suicide became epidemic, as the only escape from the intolerable evils of life. Cannibalism reappeared. According to an eye-witness, whole counties were cleared of their inhabitants. . . . When survivors were found, they were either old men and women, or children. 'I have seen these miserable creatures,' says Colonel Laurence, 'plucking stinking carrion out of a ditch, black and rotten, and been credibly informed that they digged corpses out of the grave to eat.'"

Did these dreadful sufferings soften toward the Irish the hearts of their English oppressors? On the contrary, says Sir William Petty, writing in 1672, "some furious spirits have wished that the Irish would rebel again, that they might be put to the sword."

Another era of persecution dates from William of Orange, and it was not till the twentyseventh of the reign of George II. that the Penal Code reached what Mr. McLennan calls “the fullness of its hideousness-the reproach of politicians, and disgrace of Protestants and Churchmen." He gives such an admirably compressed summary of these abominable laws, that I think the reader will excuse my quoting the passage in extenso:

The Papist was withdrawn from the charge and education of his family. He could educate his children neither at home nor abroad. He could not be their guardian, nor the guardian of any other person's children. Popish schools were prohibited, and special disabilities attached to Papists bred abroad. A premium was set on the breach of filial duty and