way, even had the audacity to end the second act with a _cancan;_ and this while English prudery demanded that the scene with the syringe, and all expressions supposed to violate decency, should be omitted. "Yes," said Mill, "the theatre with us has fallen into decay. So far as the comedy is concerned, this may be accounted for by the fact that English nature is so devoid of form, and so untheatrical, and because our gestures are so stiff and so rare, while the French, even in their daily lives, always demean themselves like actors; yet in the direction of tragedy we can show some great names. Who knows, though, but that in our day reading may supplant theatre-going and compensate for it?" He led the conversation from the theatre to English authors, and discussed with warmth two men as totally different from himself as Dickens and Carlyle. Thoroughly matter-of-fact as he was himself, he could appreciate as well as any one the poet with the great, warm heart, and the historian with the gushing, visionary imagination. Dickens was at that time just deceased; a few days previous to our conversation I had stood on the spot in Westminster Abbey where his body had but recently been laid to rest. His grave was still covered with living roses, while heavy, cold stone monuments covered the surrounding graves; it had the effect of a symbol. I communicated my impression to Mill, who expressed deep regret that he had not known Dickens personally, and had only learned through others of his amiability in private intercourse. The last words we exchanged concerned the directly impending Franco-German War, to which Mill looked forward with gloomy misgivings. He considered it a misfortune for all humanity, for the entire European civilization.