There has been a recent instance, too, in Germany, of a subject of the day—this time a serious one—being dealt with by a dramatist. _Die Gräfin Lea_, a play by Herr Rudolf Lindau, contains a striking exhibition of that prejudice against everything Jewish, to which in Germany the high-sounding name of anti-Semiticism has been given. In a very ingenious succession of scenes he shows that the widow, who by reason not only of her Jewish faith, but also of her low origin, is deemed by her husband’s relatives unworthy to succeed to his nobiliary estate, is an excellent and charming woman, who would not be out of place even in the very highest position. The tribunal before which the case is brought takes just this view of the matter, and the Countess Lea triumphs. But the dramatists argument in favor of the Jews is somewhat weak; and he leaves us to suppose that if the Countess Lea had been an ill-bred, commonplace Jewess, instead of a Jewess of great refinement, the court might equitably have given judgment against her. A reply to Herr Lindau’s piece, such as in France it would certainly have elicited, might easily have been written. But in Germany, as in England and all countries except France, the stage has not enough hold upon society to cause social questions to be often discussed in stage pieces. In France, on the other hand, the public takes such an interest in the theatre that the “boards” are almost to them what the platform is to the English and the Americans. The production of a whole series of pieces on one particular subject of debate implies a continuous attention on the part of the intelligent public such as no stage but that of Paris—and the Paris stage only in modern times—seems ever to have enjoyed. Until the end of the last century the French dramatist was poorly paid, and as dramatist had little offered to him in the way of distinction beyond the hollow applause of the public. It was not until Beaumarchais obtained the decree fixing the remuneration to dramatic authors at so much per cent. on the gross receipts that writers of all kinds, and of every degree of eminence, began to occupy themselves with the stage; and it was not until all the best literary talent in the country had thus been attracted to the drama that the French Academy opened its doors to dramatists as such. Victor Hugo was a poet first and a dramatist afterwards. The elder Dumas was a dramatist first and a novelist afterwards—and he was never admitted to the Academy at all. The election of Scribe, a dramatist, and virtually nothing else, was quite an event. Since that time, however, the entry of a highly successful dramatist of long-established reputation into the Academy has come to be looked upon as a matter of course. The last dramatist elected as such was a very admirable farce writer, M. Labiche, author of _Un Chapeau de Paille d’Italie_, _Le Voyage de M. Perrichon_, _Les Petites Mains_, and other similar pieces, full of humor, but without the least