It belongs to the individuality of M. Mounet-Sully to be quickly attractive. He has a splendid and wild presence; looks thrice a man, and something of an untamed animal. He has a great

voice, with sounds of mellow music, large rolling eyes, the shoulders of Hercules, the arm of an Oxford "stroke." And these things tell immediately told within the first days of his appearance here, as Hippolyte in Phèdre and as the hero of Hernani. He has his uses in tragedy and in florid or violent drama. He is more an actor of passion than of intelligence: it is no secret, we suppose, that his "study" is laborious and difficult, and at the best uncertain. He fails in details-shines in great effects. Somehow, the things in which his presence and passion were seen to great advantage came, fortunately for him, very soon before the public of London, and people, valuing thankfully the somewhat rare qualities he had to display, have hardly reminded themselves how much more such an actor might accomplish if he united with his physical means only some moderate share of the penetrating and comprehensive intelligence bestowed so richly on Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt, and which she has so unceasingly cultivated and enlarged. Not for M. MounetSully, however, his illustrious comrade's unerring intellect and colossal perseverance. Affair of temperament, after all! there is the faculty that sleeps and the faculty that is alert. Sarah Bernhardt owes more than many know to the persistent watching to the loins at all moments girt and the lamp trimmed.

There are those who think that Sarah Bernhardt is seen at her best in that Doña Sol of Hernani; others who hold that compositions less flowery and rhetorical than the plays of the romantic poet exhibit her best; that she is at her strongest in the appalling tragedy of Racine-in the scenes in which she humanises Phèdre. The characters of classic drama are generally simple. Each important one is less an individual with an individual's small peculiarities than a type or embodiment of passion, or of the conflict of passions, or of some dominating sentiment. A certain broad simplicity is in classic art of every kind; and so, as I had occasion to say three years ago, when Sarah Bernhardt first appeared in the part-the artist to interpret Phèdre is one who will bring to bear on it neither on the one hand heavy monotony, nor on the other infinite variety and complexity, but just such harmony and unity as have always been in Sarah Bernhardt's conceptions of parts for the theatre. But no character in classic drama, and least of all a character of conflict, can be so very simple that it gives to its interpreter no choice of sides to lean to, and in Phèdre the choice is between the more prominent

illustration of the evil love or that of the remorse and self-loathing which attend it. Mdlle. Rachel showed morbid passion much : Mdlle. Bernhardt hardly shows it at all. She concentrates her art somewhat indeed on the expression of uncertainty and hesitation, and a halting between silence and avowal, but more on the illustration of an overwhelming remorse displayed now by passionate outburst, and now in bitter self-communing. The note of her Phèdre is its modernité and its humanity. Her performance speaks to us not as the embodiment of feelings of a nameless horror for which, since Massinger, English Literature and Art have had no place- and which French literature has reserved for the curious-but as the fullest and profoundest expression of regret for irremediable things.

Well, it was wise to show us Sarah Bernhardt in Phèdre. It was a pity also not to show us this great artist of her generation in a dullish piece which she has nevertheless been able to vivify-the Rome vaincue of M. Parodi. She plays in that, at the Français, the part of a Vestal Virgin's grandmother-Posthumia, the grandmother of Opimia, who has broken her vow, who must be punished for it by death, and must die of hunger, and alone. This is what is learnt by the doating old blind woman-heroic even in her fondness—and the cruse of oil and the one loaf of bread are provided, to be taken at will in the silent prison of the rock, and to be taken with the knowledge that there is nothing more. That is the fate that Posthumia knows is in store for her grandchild. She comes upon the scene with grey hair over blanched cheeks, and gropes blindly to find whom to plead to, and whom to embrace. The rhythm of the verses is all gone. Her words-as Sarah Bernhardt speaks them-as she throws them here and there are so delivered that they seem but the uncontrollable utterances of an immense agitation. At last, when efforts to save have been vain, old Posthumia offers the girl a dagger, and the girl understands. But her hands are fettered, and it is the blind old woman who fingers nervously the place—" la place de ton cœur and strikes in kindness. Opimia is dead, and Posthumia herself undone. They bear the girl's body to the rock, and the old woman— now feebly wandering, now dazed and half-forgetful of the last minute's experience-totters to the tomb with uplifted hand

Opimia, ma fille, ouvre ! c'est ton aïeule.

I say it is a pity we have not seen this, because there can be nothing that is finer; not even the entirely exquisite ending of M. Theuriet's Jean Marie at the Odéon-when Sarah Bernhardt, first with the song of her speech, and then with her reticent gesture and posture of

grave quietude, gave expression to such sad and right resignation as ends a poem founded on "Auld Robin Gray."

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Gaining Sarah Bernhardt since the Comédie Française, or the major part of it, was last in England, the theatre has gained an artist whose merits now need no assertion, though it is profitable to try to define them. But the Français has had also losses. It has lost in M. Bressant and Madame Arnould-Plessy the two most perfect representatives of "the great world:" M. Bressant was the finest of fine gentlemen; Madame Arnould-Plessy the noblest of fine ladies. They have divided Bressant's parts chiefly between M. Worms-who was at St. Petersburg with Delaporteand M. Delaunay, who, at fifty-three, bethinks him to abandon the part of jeune premier for that of grand premier, more befitting his age. But the public will not allow him to do so. M. Delaunay, in spite of somewhat obvious crows' feet, and somewhat obvious paint-has the fire of youth and the grace. They have found at the Conservatoire no genuine youth with so much of grace and fire. And so he retains some of his earlier parts, taking, too, with distinction, but without full success, some of M. Bressant's. As for Madame ArnouldPlessy, she has no successor. A very noble dame is never now so noble at the Français as when Madame Plessis was there. Besides, she had followed Mdlle. Mars in making Marivaux possible, and in making him attractive. They have now to shelve Marivaux at all events, for a while.

The grand manner having become rarer and less marked at the Théâtre Français, existing still chiefly with Maubant, the père noble, and Mdlle. Madeleine Brohan, it is satisfactory to know that much of the best elocution remains. Few can speak a long speech, with the right breaks and variations, as well as Delaunay. Madame Favart can deliver her lines with the old skill, though the artifice of her stage methods is often much too apparent. Years have not brought her nearer to nature, but have removed her from it. She keeps, however, a stately presence and a haughtiness and coldness, sometimes effective. Madame Emilie Broisat speaks excellently the prose of daily life. Sarah Bernhardt would seem to have been born to the delivery of verse, but those who have seen her in the bright little comedy of Chez l'Avocat-nay, as Mrs. Clarkson of the Étrangère-know the instinct and the delicate art she brings to the expressive speaking of every-day matter.

The Français is still rich in its purely comic actors-actors to whom plainness or eccentricity of visage is a boon instead of a bane. Two or three faces there are which would be well placed at the Palais

The

Royal, where a face like Hyacinthe's has been a fortune. Coquelins are serious jesters in visage and air, 'the younger brother being rightly content to be chiefly comic; the elder, with the ambition of jesters who have thoroughly succeeded, now essaying-as in the Luthier de Crémone-to touch men with pathos as well as laughter. But Coquelin the elder-a born actor of comic dramain which exaggeration is permissible-brings some exaggeration, along of course with the stage art of many years' practice, into the expression of sentiment. In the Luthier de Crémone-a delightful poem whose meaning it is not needful to over-accentuate-he croons too effusively over the instrument which is his consolation in unrequited love. For us at least the display of sentiment here suggests sentimentality: it is not quite the true expression of emotion-even of the emotion of the highly strung, the sensitive, the artistic-the man in whose nature there must needs be something of a woman's. But if people, or particularly English people, traditionally reserved in expression, do not weep very willingly over the pathos of Coquelin, he commands, at will, the merriment of all the world. The mouth, the nose, the quaint eyes, the lithe action of the body, and the skill with which all these are controlled and displayed, make Coquelin a figure to remember. Thiron is the type of a bon vivant. Good cheer and genial wine are written on his visage. He is the old man who has seen life, or the bourgeois father-the exponent of animal merriment, rude affection, and limited mind of narrow yet quick intelligence.

Among comic actresses there stands in the first rank one of the youngest and newest-Jeanne Samary. She is something of what Marie Wilton was considered a dozen years ago-sharp things sound sharpest when spoken by her. She comes of a family which has given the stage one or two eminent actresses of other names, and brings to the theatre a robust intelligence and a yet more robust physique. Other actresses now at the Français may have wit, esprit, espièglerie, in greater proportion than this new representative of a race apart—the plain-spoken servants of Molière, whose honesty and confidential service give them the right to act the part of a sensible chorus, to set foolish masters straight, and to preach common-sense in matter-of-fact talk. But Mdlle. Samary has freshness and inextinguishable spirit. You have to laugh at the wit of others with Mdlle. Samary her own laughter suffices-the gayest and fullest in the world: nothing so invincible has been heard by any of us in our theatres-we have to go back to traditions of Mrs. Nesbitt and Mrs. Jordan. Or rather, it is as spontaneous and as happy as was Jefferson's in Rip Van Winkle. What a healthy animalism

to see in opposition to the secret vices of Tartufe, and how good her defiant independence of the Malade imaginaire! Mdlle. Samary will never be, and will never make the mistake of attempting to be in chief, an actress of sentiment. She has found her place, and many years are probably before her in which, with the increasing authority of experience, she will play the influential soubrette of Molière to whom no one can say nay. But it is a marked advantage to her to be able to do justice to the touches of naïve sentiment that poetical writers are fond of adding even to the comic or entertaining characters of modern comedy. And Mdlle. Samary can deliver delicately delicate things. It was the proof of this, as well as the freshness of her liveliness, that made the quite recent performance of L'Etincelle in' the Rue Richelieu so hearty a success. And M. Pailleron conceived

the piece vigorously and wrote it brilliantly. Its well-earned triumph, as the amusement of an hour, came after the arrangements for English performances seemed finally made. But they have since been changed -Les Fourchambault withdrawn, then performed; the Demi Monde permitted-this and that alteration made. If changes are still to be made, then by acceptability of subject, brilliance of style, and brightness of interpretation, L'Etincelle has a claim to be heard.

FREDERICK WEDMORE.