What are the words of Tacitus or Livy in their impression on the common mind compared with the visible resurrection of the people and life of Rome in “Virginius,” “Brutus,” “Julius Cæsar,” or “Antony and Cleopatra”? Colley Cibber said, with felicitous phrase, “The most a Vandyke can arrive at is to make his portraits of great persons seem to think. A Shakspeare goes further, and tells you what his pictures thought. A Betterton steps beyond both, and calls them from the grave to breathe and be themselves again in feature, speech, and motion.” The theatrical art puts in our hands a telescope wherewith we pierce distant ages and nations and see them as they were. And as it revives the truths and wonders of antiquity, so it reflects the present world, depicting in its successive scenes all forms of society and experience, from the luxuries of the palace to the wretchedness of the hovel. Moreover, in addition to thus lifting the curtain from the past and the present, it gives prophetic glimpses of the future, in its representations of ideal types of men and women and in its poetic pictures of happier times yet to bless the world. While most buildings are devoted to the mere interests and comforts of the private individual or family, or to mechanical business and selfish scheming, well is it that there should be one fair and open edifice dedicated to the revelation of human nature in its whole extent, of human experience in all its seriousness and mirth, of human love and hope in all their beautiful glory.