A good many modern French plays are in fact pamphlets in dramatic form; and some of them have suffered as works of art from having been too evidently written with a purpose. The dramatist who wishes to prove the truth of a proposition put forward by himself will of course make his characters act as it is necessary they should act in order to give the desired result. He must not violate probability in too flagrant a manner, and his play will scarcely succeed if the dénouement seems altogether unnatural; but even while observing these conditions he may, and usually does, so mould his personages as to make them quite exceptional; though it is with these exceptional personages that he works towards establishing his general rule. The interesting thing, however, in connection with the moral and philosophical plays of modern France is not any lesson that they teach, but the fact that such plays exist, showing as it does that the theatre in France is much more than a place of amusement. It is a place of discussion, in which every question that agitates society is treated, and often in several different pieces from several different points of view. Absurdities of the day (such as those of æstheticism) are satirised no doubt on our own stage. But the social questions dealt with on the French stage are often of a far graver character than any connected with dress. This was the case even with M. Sardou’s _Famille Benoiton_, notoriously a costume piece, and dependent in a large measure for its success on its amusing exaggerations of the exaggerated costumes of the day. But it was more than that. It touched upon many other follies akin to that of exaggeration in dress; and was really a stage echo of M. Dupin’s celebrated pamphlet on _Le Luxe effréné des Femmes_. M. Sardou’s exhilarating picture of the unbridled luxury of women called for no reply, and in fact admitted of none. His eloquent apostrophe to white muslin, “O sainte mousseline,” was criticised in the press on economical grounds, the work of “getting up” a muslin dress being neither so simple nor so inexpensive as M. Sardou had imagined. But admitting the existence of the evils that he attacked it was impossible to defend them. Similarly when, in the lively days of 1848, _La Propriété c’est le Vol_ was brought out, and the serpent of Eden was presented on the stage with the hat and spectacles and the very physiognomy of M. Proudhon, it was not likely that any dramatist would take the part of the Socialist and seek to represent individualism as ridiculous. The “right to labor” is asserted in this same piece by a dentist without patients, who insists as a matter of principle on pulling out the teeth of the first person he meets. This again could be met by no counter-presentation from a socialistic point of view, nor would the Government have permitted it; for despite the article in the _Constitution_ of 1830, declaring that “the censorship is abolished and