was the subject of one of these Homeric commotions. In that speech he was made to apostrophise by name, as present before him and as a chief offender, a bishop who was not there at all to be apostrophised. When the speech had gone the round of Europe in a polyglot version, Bishop Strossmayer in a Roman paper denounced it as a forgery, and his letter has been reprinted again and again in England. Nevertheless the speech is reprinted continually to this day at Glasgow and Belfast, and sown broadcast by post over these kingdoms, and probably wherever the English tongue is spoken.

These details are given not to show that the Vatican Council was never disturbed, or that the Council of Trent was outrageous, but to show that, as it ought to be, a spot upon the rochet of a bishop is more visible than upon the broadcloth of a layman; so, if a bishop or a council of bishops are for a moment stirred beyond their selfcommand, if for once or for twice in eight months there is a clamour such as happens almost every week in our Legislature, the world will dilate the fault into an outrage, and will deceive itself by its own exaggerations. It can be said with the simplest truth that not an animosity, nor an alienation, nor a quarrel broke the charity of the fathers of the Council. They were opposed on a high sense of duty, and they withstood each other as men that are in earnest; if for a moment the contention was sharp among them, so it was with Paul and Barnabas; and if they parted asunder on the 18th of July it was only for a moment, and they are now once more of one mind and of one heart in the world-wide unity of the infallible faith.

And here we may leave the story of the Council. What remains is to examine the cause of all this tumult round about the Council and in the governments and newspapers and non-Catholic communities of the world; for within the Council and within the Church the movement of men's minds was deep but calm, and soon subsided into tranquillity, like the agitation of pure waters which return to their former state and leave no sediment.

HENRY EDWARD, Cardinal Archbishop.

FOR AND AGAINST THE PLAY

A DIALOGUE.

N. What a collection of play-bills you have here, and how you gloat over them, as I might do over the sketches of a fine country I had travelled in-reminders of growing health, of restored happiness, and of the only wholesome raptures of the mind.

M. You are very prejudiced. I well know that you have been an ardent traveller, and I don't wish to underrate the joys of the 'middle passage,' of changing from a bad to a good inn, or of risking a valuable life on the snow borders of a crevasse. All I ask is that you in return should tolerate the imaginative resources of those whose feet are tied-of the poor tethered animals who, but for their mental flights, would see nothing but one clod of earth.

N. I cannot suppose play-bills and mental flights to be intimately associated.

M. But I can, and do. The drama is the focus of beautiful art. It holds within itself poetry brought to life; painting, by means of which, though you sit still, you roam through the universe; music, which stirs those depths of the soul to be reached by music only.

N. Mental flights I perceive it has taught you. This is, I should say, from the purpose of playing.

M. But you say wrong; what I have asserted is a simple fact, and if it seems rhapsodical to you, that is only because you have not known what it is to be roused by the stir, the life, the passion, of the acted drama.

N. The stimulus is unhealthy.

M. Not in a good drama; and if you condescend to glance over those play-bills, you will see that my taste is only for the best kindtragedy, comedy, and occasionally a first-rate melodrama or a genuine farce, besides opera; neither all Rossini nor all Wagner.

N. A genuine farce, unless it be a series of coarse vulgarities, may be harmless, for you laugh and forget it, and there is no lie in a laugh; but there is something false in the feeling excited by emotional drama even of the best kind.

M. What do you mean by 'false'?
VOL. I.-No. 4.

TT

N. I mean a feeling which only results in tears, and which is not followed up by action: emotions which generate no good work are sterile, and worse than sterile.

M. This seems to me a mistake; for if the action that follows is not immediate, the impulse to prompt it at some future time is roused, and the mind, awakened to the recognition of its own sensibilities, will turn in real life all the more readily to the perception of the joys and sorrows of others, with a desire to partake them. There have even been instances of a total regeneration effected by the sharp, sudden sympathies of the stage, and I can tell you of one which came within my own knowledge. A young fellow at Dublin, the son of a friend of mine, when he was about nineteen sank into a state of indolent apathy approaching to torpor: it was impossible to interest him in anything. Head, hand, and heart seemed equally powerless; he would turn to no pursuit, he would think of no profession. He was in this deplorable condition when the announcement of a distinguished tragic actress to play for a few nights roused a hope for him in his father's mind. He thought that her poetical passion might serve as an electric shock to the boy's numbed faculties; and he thought rightly. The young man went every night to the theatre, and under the influence of this new stimulus he began to feel his life within him. The effect of emotion created by the pathos of the actress survived her departure; his blood was stirred, his energies were roused. He began to read and think; everything about him was endowed with a fresh vitality; from a moping young dullard he was transformed into an intelligent active man, and he is now well known as a gallant officer.

N. I suspect such an effect is rare. I know a case of a stupid young man who became comparatively clever by having a portion of his brain removed after a railway accident; but I ask you whether it would be advisable on this account to seize and trepan every dull youth, and partially to deprive him of such brains as he may possess. M. Of course not. But where is the analogy?

Your fact

N. The analogy lies in the rarity of the occurrence. is, like mine, an isolated one, or at any rate it is a singular circumstance upon which we cannot reasonably found any general expectations. The more usual condition of the playgoer's mind is that of self-satisfaction; he is elated with his own humanity, and hugs himself because a few of his precious tears have fallen for an imaginary woe. These sensations are so pleasant to him that he seeks to renew them by going to the play again. Now this I call the luxury of sentiment and the quintessence of self-indulgence.

M. With all respect I beg you to remember that imaginary griefs may be coddled as easily and more injuriously in domestic life. This outlet for surplus emotion may act as a safety-valve, and serve to protect the household from alarming explosions.

N. No. A mind ready to explode will only be made more inflammable by the shows of the stage. You will never persuade me that the theatre has a calming influence.

M. I think it has under some psychological conditions. When the world within you is the centre of perplexities, where clouds gather thick and fast so that you cannot discern your onward path, then is the time to become a spectator of an animating drama; admit thus a fresh set of emotions, and those which harassed the soul before will rapidly disperse, leaving the field clear for the entrance of the judgment.

N. No; the mind quivering with a new passion is not in a fit state for the influence of the judgment, which requires equanimity for its dominion.

M. But the passion raised by the skill of the actor is by an undercurrent of thought recognised as fictitious, and the effect of it is therefore transient; it serves merely to air your thoughts.

N. Much in the same way as fever does, which leaves the faculties bewildered and incapable.

M. That might be if it were too much protracted, but for a short period it is stirring and clears the brain. The thoughts are quickened outside of self; self is forgotten.

N. This I wholly deny; self is never altogether forgotten. Neither yourself nor anybody else's self will persuade me of that.

M. I dare say not, for you are bigoted to the last degree; when you take up an opinion you will give no consideration to any argument whatsoever on the other side.

N. I am quite prepared to hear steadfast reason denounced as prejudice. I have seen enough of the world to know that if▬▬

M. Well, nothing in this world is worth quarrelling about. Let us have done, and talk of something on which we can agree.

N. By no means. I want to have it out; and I am even ready to yield you an inch or two of ground. I am ready to admit that for the spectator the drama may at its best hold vanity, self-conceit, and self-love in check for an hour or two. But what do you think of its

effect on the performer? what do you think of the personal display for him, or still more for her? of the direct appeal for admiration? of the actual necessity for it? of the claim the artist makes to be the centre of all thought, sympathy, and admiration?

M. I think that the damage done by a necessity for admiration is counterbalanced by the cultivation of such fine qualities as alone secure the true and lasting approbation of a great public.

N. Your words are bigger than the things they represent. What do you mean by these fine qualities and this great public?

M. I mean that, to hold a firm sway over the public of a great nation, an actor must cultivate in himself considerable intellectual qualities, and add to these a sense of beauty which must make him an appreciator of art generally. He must try his ear in all the

niceties of sound with a view to the modulation of his voice; he must practise his eye so as to be able not merely to distinguish but to create the beautiful in gesture, in movement, in a fold of drapery or in a motion of the finger; he must learn to be master of himself, always to have complete dominion over every muscle, so that in the utmost agony of passion he shall never repel the sympathies of his audience. If he is called to the representation of historical personages, and our greatest English dramas are our histories, he must read and study the records of the past, to identify his mind in some sort with that of his author and the scenes of his creation.

N. Your notion of dramatic art is positively sublime. It is true enough, however, that all this ought to be done, and that if it were done some kind of good might accrue to the profession of the player; but in our country a player who studies anything beyond his character in hand is quite an exceptional individual.

M. That is because our country, so respectable in government, is behindhand in art.

N. Perhaps it is because we are, as you say, behindhand in art that we are so excellent in the science of government. Ernest Renan, you may remember

M. Oh yes. I know Ernest Renan holds high development in art to be an obstacle to political progress; he thinks that intellects which would otherwise occupy themselves with the larger and more important interests of mankind fritter away their energies upon things comparatively trivial, such as a picture, a sonata, or a tragedy; but I would remind him that exaggeration can enter into every pursuit, that a nation all talking politics and all devising schemes of commerce and administration would become so intolerable that the universal suicide proposed by Novalis would be preferable, and I would ask him to observe that a great picture, a great sonata, and the fame of a great actor endure through many centuries, and extend to the whole of Europe, while the sagacious prime minister is soon forgotten, unless by a small number of politicians in his own land.

N. But the seeds he has sown grow into new and health-giving plants. What matter if the name of the sower be forgotten by the multitude, who are mostly ignorant of all that ought to be known?

M. Art is international; it binds together those whom the boundaries of land divide; and I, who condemn hereditary enmities, have seen with satisfaction the superlative musicians of inimical races joining together with their divers instruments to produce great harmony. I have even known good Germans bitterly to regret the Franco-German war, because it made the Théâtre Français inaccessible to them.

N. That is an instance to be quoted on M. Renan's side of the argument, for it is a signal example of the excessive importance attached to art by its votaries. But what a disquisition! and how