enormous rental, the cruel burden of renter's tickets, which half filled the best seats on the best nights, and indifferent public support, sent the unfortunate manager adrift, wrecked in health and fortune.

This was the last season in which the patent rights were enjoyed by the two great theatres; the new Licensing Act was passed in that year. It was the end of the ancien régime, and from that time a new order of things dramatic obtained.

After Macready, Bunn again. In 1844 he engaged Charles Kean, who since his début seventeen years before had been gaining fame and fortune, for a series of performances, which almost rivalled the successes of the father; but operas, ballets, extravaganzas, and pantomimes were Bunn's principal productions; indeed, Drury Lane was for years an opera - house rather than a theatre. Here were produced Balfe's Bohemian Girl, for which Bunn wrote the idiotic libretto, The Maid of Athens, and many other of his works; Benedict's Brides of Venice; Wallace's Maritana, etc., sung by Miss Romer, Madame Anna Thillon, Miss Rainforth, Borrani, Stretton, Weiss, and Sims Reeves, who was engaged in 1847-8.

In the latter year the Cirque National, from the Champs Elysées, performed at Drury Lane, and on June 14th (1848), a French company appeared in a version of Monte Cristo which extended over two nights. A serious riot was the consequence of this new departure in stage art, and the circus returned, to be succeeded by more opera. After which Bunn had to retire to Boulogne, and depend upon a friend for mere subsistence.

1 See the chapter on the Olympic for a detailed account of the effects of this revolutionary measure.

On December 26th, 1849, James Anderson undertook the management, with a respectable but by no means brilliant company. His most notable productions were Ingomar—no man ever played the part as Anderson did -and Azael, the latter splendidly mounted-the Temple of Isis was a wonderful set. But neither the legitimate nor the spectacular would draw, and Anderson retired, a ruined man, in the summer of the great Exhibition year. He was immediately followed by an American circus, that cleared thousands. Such was the taste of the day.

Old Drury was the scene of another notable "Farewell" on February 26th, 1851, when Macready made his last appearance upon the stage in the character of Macbeth. Macready had the bad taste to despise—or pretend to despise-the profession to which he owed. fortune, position, reputation, and cast no cast no "longing, lingering glance" behind, such as had marked the farewell of Garrick, of Kemble, of Siddons, who passionately loved their art. On that morning he wrote in his Diary: "My first thought when I awoke was that this day was to be the close of my professional life. I meditated on it, and not one feeling of regret intermingled with the placid satisfaction accompanying my performance of every act, needfully preparative to the coming event." This is not the utterance of an artist, but of a mere workman, and after reading it I can never believe that Macready was more than a very fine conventional actor, one who, had he been gifted with the divine afflatus, could not have been so destitute of enthusiasm, of sentiment, of soul. He was the product and the representative of a sordidly inartistic age. In writing of the night he says: "To attempt any description of the house, of the wild enthusiasm of applause, every little portion of the vast assembly in motion, the prolongation,

the deafening cheers would be useless." The object of the ovation was the person least moved by it. A grand farewell dinner was given him at the London Tavern, at which some very great people, literary, artistic, aristocratic, were present. We shall meet Macready again at

Covent Garden.

In the autumn season, Gye, of Covent Garden, ventured upon this forlorn hope with tragedy and opera; but although the theatre was called for a time" The Grand National Opera House," prices raised, and competent artists engaged, it would not pay. In the July of 1852 a Mr. Sheridan Smith was manager for one week, and for the same space of time a Mr. De Vere wielded Garrick's sceptre; in the October of the same year Mr. George Bolton was a six days' monarch: none of these gentlemen having the wherewithal to meet the first week's expenses.

At the close of the year last named, the directors let the theatre to Mr. E. T. Smith, publican and ex-policeman, at a rental of £3,500. What a falling off was there from the Elliston and Macready days! Uncle Tom's Cabin, then in the full flush of its popularity, inaugurated a seven years' reign on Boxing Night, 1852. It was a lucky hit, for the whole nation was in one of its periodical fits of sickly sentiment over Mrs. Stowe's highly coloured fiction. Gold, the earliest dramatic version of Charles Reade's Never Too Late to Mend, followed, and completed the prosperity of the season. During 1853 and 1854, Gustavus Brooke, whom we shall meet at the Olympic, drew crowded houses. But following in Bunn's footsteps, Smith made Drury Lane an opera-house rather than a theatre.

Italian opera was given at cheap prices in 1853 and in succeeding seasons: stalls, four shillings; dress-circle,

half-a-crown; second circles and pit, one shilling; and the two galleries, sixpence; while one guinea was the highest price charged for a private box. And at this tariff the public could hear Madame Gassier, Lucy Escott, Miss Huddart, Hamilton Braham, Bettini, Borrani, etc. But Smith, like Bunn, was a showman and of a lower grade; he, Smith, alternated Gustavus Brooke, Miss Glynn, and Charles Mathews with Chinese conjurers and a man-fly who crawled upon the ceiling, and the great Rachel with a circus. Yet he might have succeeded in making the speculation remunerative had he confined his energies within reasonable bounds; but he was at the same time lessee of Drury Lane, the Alhambra, Her Majesty's, and a travelling circus; landlord of the Radnor Tavern, at the top of Chancery Lane, wine merchant, auctioneer, picture dealer, land agent, bill discounter, newspaper proprietor, etc., etc. No wonder that, between so many stools, he ultimately came to the ground.

Dion Boucicault, after his quarrel with Webster, in the early autumn of 1862, opened Drury Lane for a season with The Colleen Bawn, Madame Celeste, himself, and his wife being the principal attractions. This was followed by the Relief of Lucknow. In the December of the same year, Edmund Falconer, having made £13,000 by The Peep o' Day at the Lyceum, was ambitious to try his fortunes at the National Theatre. His opening piece, Bonnie Dundee, upon which he spent a large sum, was a direful failure. In 1863 he entered into partnership with his acting manager, F. B. Chatterton, and produced finely mounted revivals of King John, Henry IV., Manfred, Faust, and Comus, with Phelps, Walter Montgomery, Mrs. Hermann Vezin, and a fairly good company to interpret them. Phelps's delineation of

Byron's sombre hero was, with Werner, I think, the finest thing in tragedy the Sadler's Wells manager ever did. His address to Astarte had in it a ring of pathetic passion that he seldom rose to, and the declamatory speeches were given with a power of elocution that one never hears nowadays. The scenic effects were grand; no scene more stupendous than the Hall of Ahrimanes, . with the Demon seated on his globe of fire surrounded by his satellites, could be imagined. The part had been performed at Drury Lane many years before by an actor named Denvil, who made a great hit in it. When Phelps was playing the part, Denvil was taking checks at the gallery door.

Within three years Falconer lost all his money, and Chatterton was then accepted by the committee as sole lessee at a rental of £6,000 per annum, and £10 a night for every additional performance over 200. When we compare this with the sum paid by E. T. Smith a few years previously, we gather how rapidly theatrical property was even then rising in the market.

Chatterton followed on with Shakespeare and Byron and the old comedies, interpreted by Phelps, Walter Montgomery, Barry Sullivan, John Ryder, Helen Faucit, Mrs. Hermann Vezin, Miss Neilson. But he afterwards told the world that Shakespeare spelt ruin, and Byron, bankruptcy. So in 1868 he brought out The Great City, the first of those panoramic dramas of modern life which have since attained to such extraordinary proportions on this very stage. The introduction of a real cab and a real horse was then considered a marvel of realism.

A series of adaptations of Scott's novels, with beautiful Adelaide Neilson as Rebecca and Amy Robsart, Phelps in the double rôle of King James and Trapbois in The Fortunes of Nigel, and other romantic dramas, together