I find in it what once upon a time would have been called a farce.

It is now a "drawing-room comedietta.

All rights reserved." The _dramatis personae_ consist of the Earl of Danbury, the Marquis of Rottenborough (with a past), and an American heiress--a character that nowadays takes with lovers of the simple the place formerly occupied by "Rose, the miller's daughter." I sometimes wonder, is it such teaching as that of Carlyle and Tennyson that is responsible for this present tendency of literature?
Carlyle impressed upon us that the only history worth consideration was the life of great men and women, and Tennyson that we "needs must love the highest." So literature, striving ever upward, ignores plain Romola for the Lady Ponsonby de Tompkins; the provincialisms of a Charlotte Bronte for what a certain critic, born before his time, would have called the "doin's of the hupper succles." The British Drama has advanced by even greater bounds.

It takes place now exclusively within castle walls, and--what Messrs.

Lumley & Co.'s circular would describe as--"desirable town mansions, suitable for gentlemen of means." A living dramatist, who should know, tells us that drama does not occur in the back parlour.