The fury of a mob.

communards, who were hardly restrained from the sacking of the Louvre, had no rage against the pictorial art. Had you canvassed them one by one, you would have found that ninety-nine out of a hundred reverenced the splendid gallery of Paris. But when once the ninety-nine had formed themselves into a mob, they surrendered the right of private judgment; and it is this very surrender which renders the Government of France ever shifting and unstable. In London this fury of the mob is unknown. The enthusiasm which greeted the Queen came from the crowd, and was ratified by the individual. Moreover, to be ratified by the individual, enthusiasm must be inspired by a reality. It is no chimera, but a reasoning admiration, which persuaded the people of London to shout themselves hoarse in the street; and if you would know the difference between the mob of Paris and the crowd of London, set the Russian fétes of six years since side by side with the Queen's visit to her people of London.

When reticence is imposed upon our crowd, it understands perfectly the virtue of silence. Had the French army met with the inevitable checks which hampered our progress in South Africa, government would have succeeded government in idle succession. The collective voice of the mob would not have been stilled, and rowdy bands would have marched up and down the street to intimidate the rulers of France, and to demand a frequent change. So says the 'Figaro,' and firm in the conviction that after Colenso London was a rebel-pit, the first journal of France sent her most expert reporter to describe the scene of misery and desolation. He found not a line of "copy"-only a city resolute and unmoved. Then came the relief of Ladysmith, and London could no longer restrain herself. "At last," said an intelligent Frenchman to us,-"at last it is proved you have a mob." But we think the intelligent

Frenchman was wrong. Sober stockbrokers broke their hats, and blew penny whistles in the street, not because they had surrendered the right of private judgment, but because their feeling of relief chimed with the universal feeling of relief. Thousands knew that at last friends and relatives had escaped the clutch of fever or starvation, and the whole world went out that the expression of their joy might have a larger space. A wise enthusiasm will always be evoked by a British victory or by the flattering sympathy of a wise queen. But this legitimate enthusiasm does not belong to the mob, a curse which visits us but seldom, and which then destroys its own energy by the easy breakage of a few windows.

The Théâtre Français in ashes.

But in the hour of our triumph Paris has been overtaken by a disaster in which, despite the constant suspicion of anarchy and dynamite, the mob has played no part. The Théâtre Français is in ashes. The temple wherein the august tradition of Molière has been enshrined for a century is but a ruin. The loss falls not only upon France: Europe is the poorer by its most elegant theatre, and no one who has seen Molière played upon his proper stage can stifle a heartfelt and genuine regret. Here is no room for political rancour; the true art of drama is never Chauvinist, and not even the Nationalist press, which hastily lays the blame upon Dreyfusism, can lessen our grief for this universal disaster. Although the Comédie Française is no affair of stones and windows, although it has known other homes than the stately building which was late a glory of Paris, it never has known and never will know a home better suited to its purpose and ambition. There was nothing more beautiful in the beautiful city of Paris than the public foyer, dominated by Houdon's superb Voltaire. There for a hundred years has the wit of Ferney smiled from his marble throne upon a changing crowd of cosmopolitans ;

and thence on a summer evening, when the light of the clear sky struggled against the glittering lamps, the spectator might look down on the place beneath, busy with thronged cafés and hustling pleasure-seekers; while to gaze from the pavement at the lighted windows was to snatch, as you passed, a sudden vision of luxury and joy.

Still more wonderful was the foyer of the actors, that treasure-house of pictures and of relics, upon whose walls hung but a month ago the antic portraits of Molière and his comrades, and where on the night of a cérémonie you might encounter the whole company dressed up, like children for a charade, in the robes of a doctor or a Turk. Everything was orderly, everything was dignified -no squalor, no cabotinage disturbed the atmosphere of polished pleasantry. And the stage-was it not perfect in order and arrangement? The stage of the best London theatre still gives you an impression of squalor and a stormed barn; but the subventioned theatre of France remained splendid despite its litter of furniture and scenery. Moreover, it was something more than a theatre-it was to boot a museum and a library; and it is the one gleam of satisfaction in a dreary misfortune that the priceless archives, the incomparable sculptures, and the curious pictures have all been saved. The walls of the new theatre will soon arise; the rare and costly treasures will be guarded more jealously than before,all, indeed, will be restored save the poor actress who has miserably perished on the threshold of her life and talent.

But that which no fire can destroy is the constitution of the Théâtre Français and its incomparable tradition of acting. Though not a stone of the building were saved, still the Decree of Moscow would remain in force, a monument to Napoleon's foresight as well as to his noble detachment of mind. That a soldier, on the morrow of

Its incomparable tradition.

a military disaster, should distract his grief by devising rules for the management of a theatre is without precedent in the world's history; that these rules should survive half-a-dozen changes of dynasty is a still greater miracle. Yet more wonderful is the thread of tradition which links the theatre of Sardou with the theatre of Molière, and this tradition is far more subtle and more lasting than sites or stones. The torch of art has been handed on from generation to generation; the actor of yesterday is the professor of to-day, and the training which is always imperative ensures the persistence of an excellent and authentic style. What Delaunay practised twenty years ago he now preaches; and since he learnt from a predecessor the art which his pupils will presently inculcate, it is clear that there need be no break in the acting of France.

So much, then, is imperishable, and thus our regret for the lost theatre is sensibly mitigated. Nor do we need an elaborate argument to prove the advantage of an admirable system. The English actor begins his career and commonly ends it an amateur. He has so generous a faith in his own powers, that he believes he can act like a gentleman on the stage because he behaves like a gentleman off it. He forgets that to produce an illusion, tone, gesture, and bearing must be changed; and forgetting this, he forgets also the value of training. He saunters upon the boards without doubt and without fear, and the consequence is that the men of genius who beguile our leisure can rarely speak with a cultivated accent, and not infrequently walk like contortionists. The French actor, on the other hand, does not perform until he has been to school, until he has learned to manage both his voice and his limbs with decorum; and if he be at the Français he learns something more than this: he learns to act (so to say) with all the weight that tradition gives him. To see Coquelin's incomparable "Tartuffe," for instance, which

is the fine flower of the French School, is to forget the actor in the part. This is not the Coquelin of the Porte St-Martin, who as Cyrano proved that he could embroider the commonplace as well (or as ill) as Sir Henry Irving; this is the old Coquelin of the Théâtre Français, demonstrating that, despite many years of starring, he can still accommodate an amazing talent to a perfect method. And we know not to which we should ascribe the greater merit-to the talent or to the method. The talent is all the actor's own, the sonorous voice, the apt gesture, the inestimable restraint which enables him at the crisis of the play to achieve a great effect by the simplest means, the faculty of getting into the very skin of the character, the sudden change from insolence to humility, in which even his back and shoulders appear to be acting. But the method, like the scenic decoration, is as old as Molière. Without the sacred tradition, there might have been a Coquelin, but never Coquelin's "Tartuffe."

A simple stage.

So it is that, though Coquelin is at the Porte StMartin, a visit to the Théâtre Français, which still endures, though its walls be crumbling, takes you back across the centuries. The setting is as simple and restrained as the performance. A backcloth with a table and a few chairs are all that was necessary in the seventeenth century; they are all that is necessary to-day, and they are all that you get at the Français, when the classics are given. The stage is not clogged with the vulgar furniture of archæologists; the play has no difficulty in emerging from its ornament; and you will never hear at the Français the foolish comment "How lifelike!" which bursts from the lips of the untravelled Londoner when he sees the Rialto in the "Merchant of Venice." And as there is a propriety in the scene, so there is a propriety in the acting. All are loyal to the ensemble: here is no competition to get into the limelight, no thirsty anxiety to deliver a