Before getting at the very essence of the difficulty, I will ask in what light do our upper-middle class, and upper-lower middle class, and the remainder of that form (the public school divisions are useful) regard the stage as a means of earning a livelihood? We must put out of the case entirely all instances of genius. An histrionic genius _will_ be an actor, and his success will justify his choice. The force of his genius will take him everywhere. Genius excuses a multitude of faults and solecisms. We must, too, leave out of the question cases of exceptional talent, where there is more than an occasional spark of the _feu sacré_. Whether histrionic genius could be better utilised than on the stage, may occur to some serious minds with a decided anti-theatrical bias. But the histrion for the stage, and the stage for the histrion, and we must take the stage as it is for what it is, and not for what it is not. Such a reform of the stage, as shall give its members something like the status they very properly covet, is a matter for future consideration. Let it be understood then—and I cannot impress this too often on those who do me the honor of reading my contribution towards the discussion,—that I am only speaking of very ordinary men and women taking to the stage as a means of earning their livelihood. The men first; it is not yet awhile _place aux dames_, when professions are concerned. Whatever theatrical biography I have taken up, I can call to mind but very few instances of a man going on the stage with the full approbation of his relatives. Let his parents be small or large tradesmen, civil servants, clerks in the City, no matter what, they rarely took kindly to their son “going on the stage.” It was so: is it not so now? The bourgeois is as dead against his son becoming an actor as ever he was. Scratch the British bourgeois and you'll come upon the puritan.