ised world had but the day before been bowed in homage.

The Cassius of Herr Teller was a performance of great merit. He had "the lean and hungry look" of the ascetic republican, who "thought too much," and filled Cæsar with distrust. An actor of large experience, trained in the light of good traditions, he threw himself into the part with the sincerity of a true artist. His Cassius was therefore a figure to remember; and this all the more that in subsequent performances, the same actor proved himself as much at home in comedy, as in the higher poetical drama. The Brutus was not so satisfactory, lacking the dignity of an ardent nature, disciplined to self-command, which Shakespeare has so wonderfully drawn. In the beautiful scene with Portia, the absence of this characteristic became most prominent; and its absence had an evil effect upon the Portia who, beside a Brutus of the highest stamp, would not, as she did, address her remonstrances to him with a noisy vehemence, strangely discordant with the mingled dignity and tenderness which breathes through every word that Shakespeare has placed in her mouth. And yet the actress, Fräulein Haverland, showed herself a mistress of her art in the only other scene where Portia appears (Act II. sc. 5), where she is hurried into the street by her anxiety to learn the news of the attempt she knows is about to be made on Cæsar's life. Into this scene she threw an intensity which carried the audience by storm, and to which they delighted to give a hearty recognition.

In "The Winter's Tale," which almost rivalled "Julius Cæsar" in popularity, a severer test was applied to the powers of the Mein

ingen system to do justice to the finer poetical elements of the Shakespearian drama. The play affords scope in Leontes and in Hermione for the subtlest histrionic power; while the episode of Florizel and Perdita, sweetest of idyls, demands the most delicate handling, not only in their representatives, but also in the portrayal of the ideal pastoral life in which their story is set. The Drury Lane audience were better able to form a comparative judgment in this case, for the play has been seen, and at no very distant date, on both the London and provincial stages. In exquisite beauty of costumes and of grouping, the Meiningen performance left nothing to be desired. At every turn it seemed as if some of the great pictures of the Venetian school had come to life. The scenery, too, with one exception, was all that could be wished; and everywhere was apparent the same fine sense of colour, of picturesque arrangement, of the value of little incidents of detail, as in the “Julius Cæsar," carried in some respects to even an higher pitch of excellence. As a mere piece of scenic splendour and stage effect, it would be difficult to imagine anything superior to the scene of Hermione's trial, and the effect upon the awestruck crowd of the thunderbolt that sweeps from heaven, in answer to Leontes' sacrilegious words

"There is no truth at all i' the oracle”—

that has just proclaimed Hermione's innocence. But how dearly was the triumph of such a scene purchased by the violation of truth to Shakespeare, and to all probability! Shakespeare places the scene in "a court of justice." Here it was in a public street. No doubt Hermione complains of having been hurried

before

I have got strength of limb❞—

but this merely means that she, in her yet delicate state, has been hurried "through the open air" to the place of trial. The temptation to strain the words of the poet had, however, been obviously too great, for it gave the stage-director the opportunity of bringing in his welldrilled crowds to express, by looks and exclamation, their sympathy with the unhappy queen, and to keep up a running commentary of byplay upon the words of the leading actors. But the mischief did not stop here. From the desire to compose his groups well, he subjected Hermione to an act of unmanly rigour, of which not even Leontes would have been guilty; for in place of being conducted to a seat, as befitted a woman fresh from childbed, and that woman an Emperor's daughter, and herself a queen, she was made to stand on a raised platform, almost jostled by a mob of bystanders, throughout a scene of more than ordinary length. Placed in such circumstances, it was perhaps not strange that the speeches of Hermione were given by Fräulein Haverland with almost masculine energy of tone and gesture, little suited to express that touching combination of wounded dignity and tenderness with martyr like sweetness and heart-searching pathos which Shakespeare has infused into every line of this scene.

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In this mode of treating a scene of exceptional poetic value, we must decline to adopt the teaching of the Meiningen school, for it is, in the worst sense, a "shouldering aside of the dramatic interest" for the sake of what is of no moment whatever to the right understand ing of the play-nay, more, for

actually impedes the performers from giving due effeet to the conception of the poet.

The same absence of sympathy with Shakespeare's purpose was not less conspicuous in the last scene of the play, where, after sixteen years spent by Leontes in mourning for the wrong he has done to the wife whom he believes to be dead, she is restored to him by Paulina. The situation is one of the finest in Shakespeare; he has been at peculiar pains to invest it with every circumstance of solemnity. Hermione, sanctified by long years of seclusion and grief, through which she has been sustained only by the promise of the oracle that her lost daughter shall be restored to her, is to be given back to the husband, all whose remorse could not, until that child was found, win her again to his arms, so wide was the gulf which had been placed between them by the outrage done to her as wife, as mother, and as as queen. Like a strain of sad sweet music, the scene brings all the pain and misunderstanding of the earlier acts to a harmonious close. So anxious has Shakespeare been to indicate the way he wished it to be treated, that he places it in “a chapel in Paulina's house." How great, then, was the surprise of those who knew this, when the curtain rose upon one of those impossible fairy groves of rainbow lines which precede the transformation scene of a pantomime; and this, although the text in as many words indicates that the curtained recess to which Paulina leads Leontes stands at the end of a picture-gallery along which she has just brought him! If the stage-director had not felt the situation, as little did the actors seem to do so. Hermione, not robed to resemble a statue, but wearing

the royal apparel in which she had appeared in the first act, inspired no reverence, for she wore no trace on her looks of the " woman, bright with something of an angel light," with which long years of holy meditation bad suffused them. Here, too, Herr Barnay as Leontes proved quite unequal to the situation. Where were the amazement, the awe, the pang of remembrance, the welling-up of the old passionate love at the sight of his muchwronged queen, which finds vent in the words

Where, too, was all the trembling ecstasy of mingled hope and fear, as, while he gazed, the figure before him seemed to stir with life? Remembering what this scene was, as last it was seen in London, with Macready as Leontes, and what its effect upon the audience was, we felt that our German visitors have yet much to learn before they can interpret worthily what is best and highest in the Shakespearian drama. What waste of power, too,-what disregard of the sense of proportion -to expend so much labour and wealth of illustration on all the preceding portions of the play, and then to let it come to a close so flat and unimpressive!

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Space fails us, otherwise might further illustrate this blindness to the finer poetic aspects of the play by the manner in which the episode of Florizel and Perdita was treated. Hard indeed, we own, must it always be to find a young actor and actress equal to parts of such ideal beauty; and if their Meiningen representatives were little like what the imagination pictures, one is too much accus

tomed to such disappointments to complain. But the scenes where they are the central figures were overlaid by the introduction of a great deal too many figures, by too many garish dresses, and dames of the ballet type, which merely delayed the action, and distracted attention from what was of more importance. All praise, however, was due here, as in "Julius Cæsar," to the care taken with the minor parts throughout the play. This exemplary quality, indeed, distinguished all the performances; and set before those who take upon themselves the responsibility of conducting a theatre an example which, if followed, may do much to raise the character of the English stage.

We must not close our remarks on the play without a word of warm commendation for the Paulina of Fräulein von Moser-Sperner, into which the actress threw all that intensity of feeling which the part requires, and with the skill of emphasis and action which only an accomplished artist can command. Results of an average excellence so marked as in the case of the Meiningen Company, speak volumes for the industry and modestly artistic spirit with which they must have worked through many years to produce so prevailing a completeness of ensemble. For it is only by years of work pursued in this spirit that such results are to be obtained. There is no royal road to excellence on the stage, any more than in any other art. Yet when we see how far short of what could be wished is what even these patient, intelligent, and practised artists can achieve, we may well wonder at the courage of those young gentlemen from Oxford who seem to have deemed it to be their vocation to show London, at the Imperial Theatre, a few weeks ago, how "Romeo and

Juliet" ought to be acted. In the "Agamemnon" of Eschylus, with which they entertained their their friends last year, they were safe from criticism. Nine-tenths of their audience did not understand a word of spoken Greek, and the other tenth were very tolerant of an attempt which had at least the merit of being novel, if not amusing. A little common-sense-which, how ever, does not always accompany a knowledge of Greek-might have taught these young gentlemen to distrust the praises of such lenient critics, and to return, with laurels all untarnished, to "strictly meditate the thankless Muse," or to prosecute those other pursuits which their Alma Mater is supposed to foster. Instead of this, they have rushed before the town in the play which perhaps of all others in Shakespeare imposes the very highest demands upon those who would embody it on the stage. The fool

ish praise of personal friends has no doubt not been wanting to gratify the vanity which prompted an attempt, the audacity of which amounts to mere impertinence. But it would be idle to waste criticism upon the outcome of what had no doubt absorbed an infinite quantity of time, unwisely taken from more fitting pursuits. Of all arts, as Voltaire long ago said, the art of acting is the most difficult. When will amateurs learn to realise this truth? If act they must, let them do so by all means; but let them first qualify themselves by all the hard study, and still harder practice, which the art demands. If the young Oxford amateurs wish to find out whether nature meant them for the stage, let them take to it as a profession. Judged by what was seen of them at the Imperial Theatre, they will scarcely provoke very eager competition at present amongst managers for their services.

A WORD about our position will explain much of that which follows.

The Vaal river is a considerable stream, running, roughly speaking, east and west. On approaching Standerton from Newcastle the traveller sees in front of him the Vaal, and beyond it the town stretching out towards the north for half a mile. Immediately before him is the deep cutting which leads to the "drift;" on the left, a mile away, on rising ground, is the camp and fort. The town itself lies in a basin, about a mile square, the rim of which, to begin on the right of the "drift," runs away north, when it turns toward a high, flat-topped hill on the left-Stander's Kop. Between this hill and the camp the ground appears tolerably level.

This rim is dotted with koppies, tiny hills of boulders here and there. The first, on the right of the town, is called Graveyard Koppie, because of the graveyard below it; a mile further on is another, Hotel Koppie; a little beyond is North Koppie; thence the ridge, cut by the line of the Heidelberg road, trends west to a koppie, a spur of Stander's Kop, called by us Froom's Koppie; then a mile of flat and the fort. Outside this line of koppies the open veldt stretches to the horizon.

A curious incident of the siege occurred on the 7th January. At daybreak we saw that an earthwork had been put up in the night on the high ground across the river, 900 yards distant from, and threatening the town, as well as all the ground between it and the fort. Already two sides were exposed to fire, and

now this work closed up the third, besides commanding our line of road with the town, where our water lay; and the perplexity thus caused us may be imagined. The earthwork was large enough to hold fifty men, lay on the top of a ridge against which our advance would be up a bare slope, perfectly adapted to defensive fire, and was commanded by the stony koppie to the left, which the Boers held. We had been warned against traps, and this looked a veritable one. So we set to work to put up traverses against it, changing round the openings in our defended houses, intending to wait and see what was to come.

That afternoon two natives volunteered to cross the river and burn a house near the "drift" which, if occupied by the Boers, would have caused no great mischief; and this done, finding no notice taken of them by the new work, which was just above, the pair ran on to it, crouching much, and with their guns ready, reached it, only to find it empty. We watched them pulling it down, throwing the sods right and left; in ten minutes it was level, and they turned back, the Dutch on the koppie walking up just too late, and firing at them as they came down, which they did in safety, bringing with them two spades left to finish the work that night, and got a good subscription from the townspeople for their daring.

I expected that they would try to build it up again during the night, and fixed two rifles on a rest, laying them on the spot, having first got the range with half-a-dozen