We have indeed made little progress in reforming the stage. Mr. Charles Kean has devoted his talents to improving the wardrobe and scenery, and has so far done good service; but in the essential matter of acting we are nearly where we were in the past century. While the background and dresses are reformed, and the bag-wig in which Garrick played Hamlet is thrown aside, we have carefully preserved all the old points, all the stage-tricks, and all the stilted intonations of the artificial school; and the consequence is, that the sole reality is in that which is the least essential. The attention is thus withdrawn from the actor to the scenery, and we have a spectacle instead of a tragedy. The background is real, but the actor is conventional; the blanket has usurped the prominent place, and Shakespeare has retired behind it. The bursts of genius with which Garrick startled the house, and made the audience forget his bag-wig, are wanting, but all his tricks are preserved; the corpse is still there, but the spirit he put into it is gone. In comedy there is as little resemblance to real life as in tragedy; humor and wit are travestied by buffoonery and grimace. Instead of pictures of life as it is, we have grotesque daubs and caricatures, so exaggerated and farcical in their character as to “make the judicious grieve.” The actor and the audience react upon each other. The audience are generally uneducated, and for the most part agree with Partridge in his comment on “Hamlet:” “Give me the king for my money,” says he. The actors must bow to this low taste,— “For they who live to please must please to live.”