age at the foyer of the Français, the outline of which suggests a recollection of Macready. Talma died at Paris in October 1826, and was buried at Père la Chaise: a large number of friends and admirers attended his obsequies, and two funeral orations were delivered at his grave. The excommunicative decree against comedians was not then annulled, but any priest who had attempted to put it in force on that occasion would have run considerable personal risk; only once more in the reign of Louis XVIII., upon the death of Mlle. Raucourt, a measure of this sort was attempted. She was an actress of no great powers, but she was much esteemed for her personal qualities, and when the church of St. Roch refused admittance to her body, the doors were broken open and the clergy were menaced by the populace. Finally the corpse was carried with demonstrations of enthusiasm to the cemetery of Père la Chaise, where the funeral ceremony was solemnly performed, and where a monumental bust was afterwards erected to mark the tomb. It is satisfactory to reflect that the ecclesiastical decree of 1850 has rendered the recurrence of such scandalous proceedings impossible. Mlle. Mars, whose grace and finished elocution lent their charm to Molière's comedies under the First Empire, was the leading actress of the Théâtre Français when that remarkable revolution took place in 1830, under the direction of Victor Hugo, then a young poet, which ended in the triumph of the romantic over the classical school of poetry. Greek rules were cast to the winds, and French poets threw off half their trammels. Shakspeare was enthroned as the divinity of young France. Amidst extraordinary opposition from the classical school in Paris, Victor Hugo brought out his tragedy of Hernani.' The result is well known; the poet conquered, and the French Muse was set free-free to breathe fresh air and to extend her views beyond the bounds of the antique drama. His tragedies of Hernani,' 'Le Roi s'amuse,' 'Marion de Lorme,' 'Angelo,' and Lucrèce Borgia,' show the highest qualities of dramatic poetry. They transport the reader or the spectator to the scene of action; they send life into the dead centuries; the spirit of their time is in them and the passion of all humanity. The vast imagination of the dramatist works with equal power in lyrics and in prose fiction. In verse his Légende des Siècles' and 'Châtiments,' in prose his Notre Dame,' 'Les Misérables,' 'Travailleurs de la Mer,' and 'Quatre Vingt Treize' are perhaps best known to English readers. 6 Alfred de Musset's dramatic pieces written in prose, but concentrating in their movement and dialogue the very essence of poetry, belong to the romantic school, which may also claim as distinguished distinguished disciples Ernest Legouvé, Alexandre Dumas (père), Ponsard, and Augier. From the year 1838 to 1855, Mlle. Rachel's genius as an actress of classical tragedy took almost complete possession of the Théâtre Français. Her origin is well known: the child of a Jew pedlar, she roamed the streets in Paris, beating a tambourine and picking up halfpence for her sister, Sarah Félix, who sang pathetic ballads. The kindness of a gentleman, who was touched by Sarah's voice, transported the sisters from their wandering life to the Conservatoire of Music. Rachel Félix, then a little child, subsequently attracted notice by her recitations, and one of the best actors and teachers in Paris, Samson, made her his pupil. It is a mistake to say that the beggar girl, with sudden power, burst into fame as a tragedian. She was carefully educated; and she submitted to some years of training before she first appeared at the Comédie Française on the 12th of August, 1838, in the part of Camille in 'Les Horaces.' Her voice as a girl had been harsh and unmanageable, and it was by determined perseverance and under first-rate guidance that she made it a fine instrument of poetic art. She was most distinguished in the tragedies of Corneille and Racine. Her movement was majestic, her down-pressed brow was full of thought, her long narrow eyes flashed when the torrent of wrath rose within her. She had a look that could command a multitude, and a withering tone that could annihilate her hearers. In tender scenes she was more artistic than natural. Passion at its highest tide; the passion of invective hatred, contempt, or that of a sublime rapture, found in her a grand interpreter. But when she acted, the poet was only represented in one character, for she cared more for herself than the drama, and liked to be surrounded by mean performers. Her imperious avarice took her frequently away from the Théâtre Français to the provinces and foreign countries, and she harassed the management, while her power made her indispensable to the theatre. She was a great artist whose ascendancy was damaging to art. She died at the Villa Sardou at Cannet, in the environs of Cannes, in the year 1857. Her remains were embalmed and conveyed to Paris, where she was buried with Jewish rites in the Israelite division of the cemetery of Père la Chaise, with all the honour that her genius deserved. The Decree of Moscow, modified by resolutions passed in 1850 and 1859, still regulates, as we have already said, the Comédie Française; and Napoleon's code had for its basis the first constitution of the society established by Louis XIV. in 1680. The sociétaires are shareholders, who divide the profits of the com pany pany among its members according to certain rules. To be admitted as sociétaire, the artist must have served in the theatre as pensionnaire during the space of one year, but with regard to this rule, some exceptions have been allowed. All sociétaires are submitted to a process of re-election at the end of ten years. After the space of twenty years of service they are allowed to retire with a pension of 4000 francs, the charges of which are equally divided between the government of France and the administration of the Comédie. The offices held in connection with the Théâtre Français are too numerous to be detailed here -a few important ones only can be named. The function of the Administrator-General, President of the Committee, is that upon which the welfare of the Society is most dependent, and is at present filled by M. Émile Perrin, remarkable for his ability and vigour, and who undertook the post, under many difficulties, in July 1871. The stage manager during this last season was M. Regnier, distinguished for many years as a first-rate comedian and accomplished gentleman, but he has found the fatigue of his position more than he can bear, and he has given in his resignation; it is his province to watch over the business of the scene and the elocution of the performers; he is present at every rehearsal, and considers the effect of every intonation. M. Chevallier is the general manager, and M. Guillard the chief librarian; his learning and patience have been very successfully employed upon a remarkable collection of books and chronicles dating from the earliest days of the Society, and illustrating its history step by step. M. Guillard's courtesy is equal to his knowledge, and it would be difficult to speak too highly of either. It is his task to look over MS. pieces and sift them, only submitting those which seem possible to the Comité de Lecture, upon whose decision the reception of a piece ultimately depends, and which consists of a certain number of sociétaires with some additional members who are authors and artists. The administration of the whole Society, under the domination of the President, devolves upon a Committee composed of six sociétaires and two pensionnaires; the censorship, as at present established, consists of an inspector-general, two inspectors, and two sub-inspectors. The Théâtre Français represented eighty different pieces, from the 1st January to the 1st October in last year, a considerable number of which have been revivals of great works of the classical and romantic school. Among the new pieces produced, Octave Feuillet's 'Sphinx' made for a while a great sensation; it belongs to a school neither romantic nor classical, which may be characterised as prosaic and doctrinaire. This kind of drama occupies itself always with some form of domestic vice, and its scene of says, action is generally a drawing-room in Paris. The most usual form of vice is the seduction of the married from their conjugal duties; the only variety supplied being the sex of the seduced person. The result is most frequently a violent death for the principal offender, with a sharp sermon from the author, who this is the consequence.' The authors produce their effect by abrupt transitions of emotion. No poetry enters into them; they starve the imagination, and therefore they injure art. The Demi Monde,' by Dumas fils, before acted at the Gymnase, was brought out at the Français soon after the 'Sphinx.' It is a sombre, disagreeable, vigorous satire. To this has succeeded a finely-written, well-constructed tragedy in verse, by Monsieur de Bornier, called 'La Fille de Roland,' in which M. Mounet Sully and Mlle. Bernhardt have both distinguished themselves by their excellent acting. The performers who have become famous since the establishment of the second empire are worthy of their predecessors. Some favourite names will at once occur to the reader: Bressant, Got, Delaunay, Mounet Sully, Coquelin; Mlles. Favart, Brohan, Bernhardt, Croizette, Reichemberg, Broizat, and Madame A. Plessy. We pause upon the name of Bressant-intellectual and dignified in poetical drama and the finished gentleman of high comedy-to regret the illness which has suspended his performtances. We have not space to characterise the qualities of that great comedian, M. Got, nor to dwell upon the peculiar genius, marred by defects not yet corrected, of the young tragedian, M. Mounet Sully. Mlle. Croizette, handsome, brilliant, energetic, and very original, has been the subject of great admiration and strong censure. She is wholly unconventional, and stands out as a conspicuous type of the school which rejects the classical in art. Very willingly we turn to Mlle. Reichemberg, whose modesty is part of her distinction; who by her fair beauty and tender winning ways, charms more than she strikes; of whom Théophile Gautier has said, 'C'est une fleur, un sourire, un printemps,' and who seems made to engage sympathy. Of M. Delaunay we must speak as the most perfect of living artists, always finished yet ever increasing in power; who whether he interprets a passionate poet or a light satirist, gives the whole meaning and whole emotion of his author, and lends some new attraction or unexpected force to every character he undertakes. Such excellence is the result of selfabnegation and laborious days undergone at the sacrifice of pecuniary gain, and of personal ambition. We have now taken a rapid survey of the progress of the Comédie Comédie Française, from the simplest form of its origin to its present complicated development; we have seen the trammels of pedantic constraint rejected by the poet and his interpreters. Let us hope that the movement will not press on too far; that the realistic will not supersede the poetical; and that dramatic art will know how to maintain its freedom without forfeiting its dignity. ART. VI.-Falconry in the British Isles. By Francis Henry Salvin and William Brodrick. 2nd edition. London, 1873. HE T age of chivalry is past. The tournament and the belted knight have disappeared. The manly and unselfish sport of falconry, in which all who witnessed it could share, and even the gentler sex might take an active part without hazarding the influence of their feminine attractions, has been nearly forgotten. The noble falcon, for centuries the favourite of kings and princes -their companion in the palace and their confederate in the field—long since degraded to the ranks of feathered vermin, has been superseded by the fowling-piece, and the merlin has been supplanted by the lap-dog. Many were the ponderous volumes that appeared in those far distant days, from the time of the Conqueror to that of the Commonwealth, containing elaborate treatises on the art; but about the latter epoch it received a heavy blow and great discouragement' from the puritanical habits and manners of the age, reviving again, like the flame of an expiring candle, at the Restoration. Since that period it has remained almost dormant, its slumber being fitfully broken from time to time, as one or another enthusiast has roused it to vitality-for the march of agricultural improvement and the discoveries of science have immeasurably added to the falconer's difficulties and limited his sphere of action-yet in spite of gamekeepers, breechloaders, high farming, enclosure commissioners, railways, and population, the practice has never completely died out. It has been kept alive from time to time by a few devoted admirers, especially in Scotland and Ireland; while even in England there exists at the present moment more than one favoured oasis, in a desert of civilisation, where the sport is annually enjoyed, and Falconry in the British Isles,' we rejoice to say, is not altogether a thing of the past. 6 About one hundred years ago appeared a treatise on the art, in which the author mourns pathetically over its almost total decline in favour of the pointer and the gun. We have heard similar |