fine gentleman, in the pretty vaudeville of ‘Le Juif’ (by A. Rousseau, Désaugiers, and Mesnard), brought out at the Porte St.-Martin fifty odd years ago. Hortense is about to appear at Orleans, and she says, or sings: Je suis l’idole dont on raffole. Après demain mon triomphe est certain! ‘Oui,’ rejoins Brillant, Oui! de tous les points de la salle, Je prédis que sur votre front, Trente couronnes tomberont. And Hortense replies confidentially: Elles sont dans ma malle! This is a custom, therefore, which French actresses derive from no less a person than Nero. This gentleman, moreover, invariably spoke well of every other actor to that actor’s face, but never at any other time. If this custom has survived--which is, of course, hardly possible--he who practises it can justify himself, if he pleases, by this Neronic example. Although it was death to leave the theatre before the imperial amateur had finished his part, there were some people who could not ‘stand it,’ but who must have handsomely tipped the incorruptible Roman guard to be allowed to vanish from the scene. There were others who insisted on being on the point of death, but it is not to be supposed that they were carried home without being munificently profuse in their recompense. There was no shamming on the part of the indefatigable Roman ladies, who, it is said, sometimes added a unit to the audience and a new member to the roll of Roman citizens, before they could be got away. And, when a man ran from the theatre, dropped from the walls of the town, and took to his heels across country, he must have been even more disgusted with the great amateur than you are, my dear reader, with, let us say, your favourite worst actor on any stage. _Exit Nero, histrio et imperator._ Some one has said that the Italians had not the necessary genius for acting. Ristori has wiped out that reproach. Private theatricals may be said to have been much followed by them. Plays were acted before popes just as they used to be (and on Sundays too) before our bishops. It is on record that the holiest of Holy Fathers have held their sides as they laughed at the ‘imitations’ of English archbishops given to the life by English bishops on mission to Rome; and, on the other hand, there is no comedy so rich as that to be seen and heard in private, acted by a clever, joyous Irish priest, imitating the voice, matter, and manner of the street preachers in Italy. Poliziano’s ‘Orfeo,’ which inaugurated Italian tragedy, was first played in private before Lorenzo the Magnificent. Italian monks used to act Plautus and Terence, and the nuns of Venice were once famous for the perfection with which they acted tragedy in private to select audiences.