Nor is this all. The kinetoscope, as at present exhibited under various unpleasing names, is imperfect in two ways: first because it is powerless to reproduce colour, and secondly because it gives at best a mere magic-lantern picture violently out of focus, and by its pulsatory motion horribly distressing to the eyes. Chromatic photography will overcome the former difficulty. When we find out how to increase greatly the receptive rapidity of photographic emulsion without spoiling what photographers call the "grain" of it; or when we have improved, as we every year are improving, the optical qualities of lenses, we shall be able to have our pictures in focus. The distressing flicker of moving pictures is an objection purely mechanical in its cause. But when, as they will be in a few years, all these objections except the first have been removed, and even when we have colour-photography in a true sense of the word, there will still remain one field to conquer. We must have, instead of moving pictures, something which represents all objects as solid. The difference is the difference between an ordinary photograph and a highly-improved stereoscopic picture magnified to life-size. When these advantages are attained it will be possible to represent, exactly as it happened, any event which has been suitably photographed. The utility of this as a means of intelligent amusement will be at once perceived. Imagine the theatre of the future. Probably it will not be beyond the means of the rich, even when restrained from over-possession as it is evident that they must be, to have theatre-rooms in their own houses. But the masses will no doubt go to the theatre much as they do now. Only instead of seeing a company of actors and actresses, more or less mediocre, engaged in the degrading task of repeating time after time the same words, the same gestures, the same actions, they will see the performance of a complete "star" company, as once enacted at its very best, reproduced as often as it may be wanted, the perfected kinetoscope exhibiting the spectacle of the stage, the talking machine and the phonograph (doubtless differentiated) rendering perfectly the voices of the actors and the music of the orchestra. There will be no need for the employment of inferior actors in the small parts. As the production of any play will only demand that it be worked up to the point of perfection and then performed once, there will be no difficulty in securing the most perfect rendering that it is capable of. The actor's art will be immensely elevated, not only by his relief from the drudgery of repeated performance and by the leisure thus afforded him for study and reflection, but also by the removal of what is keenly felt by all players of sensibility and ambition as one of the greatest drawbacks of the stage. We are accustomed to the actor's complaint that whereas the author, the sculptor, the painter, the composer of music, makes for himself a fame imperishable as the