Even in New York this method is not as new as it may seem, and more than one metropolitan daily has approximated to it, altho no one of them has completely detached the dramatic critic from the play-reviewer and from the supervisor of theatrical gossip. And it has long been adopted in certain of the Paris newspapers. In the _Temps_, for example, when Sarcey was its dramatic critic, there was a daily column of theatrical announcements and of brief reports upon first-night performances; and with this department of the news of the theaters Sarcey had nothing to do, and for it he had no responsibility. Then in the ample space specially reserved for him in the issue of every Sunday afternoon, he dealt with the dramatic themes that seemed to him worth while. If a play appeared to demand prolonged study, he might go to see it two, or even three times, before he undertook to formulate his opinion; and on occasion he would carry over his detailed discussion of a very important drama into the article of the following Sunday. On the other hand, if no recent play seemed to him to deserve his continued attention, he would devote himself to one of the recent books about the theater or to a detailed discussion of the proper interpretation of one of the classics of the French drama kept constantly in the repertory of the Comédie-Française. IV The adoption of this method would relieve the dramatic critic from one of his existing disadvantages; he would be released from criticising the pieces which are beneath criticism. The literary critic, and even the ordinary book-reviewer, never spends his time in considering dime novels--whereas the dramatic critic is now called upon to waste many evenings in beholding a play which is only the theatrical equivalent of a dime novel. The immediate result of this futile and fatiguing expenditure of energy is likely to be discouraging and even enervating. If the dramatic critic could be totally relieved from all contact with the show business when the show business has only a casual connection with the drama, it would tend to keep him fit for his essential task. Under the present conditions it is no wonder that the theatrical reviewer wearies of his task and loses the gusto and the zest without which all work tends to degenerate into the perfunctory and the mechanical.