has eyes to see and ears to hear can find "a terrible example" in almost any of these plays, even the lightest. For the congregation to which it was delivered there is a sermon in _Toto chez Tata_, perhaps the piece in which, above all others, the Muse seems Gallic and _egrillarde_. That is a touch of real truth, and so of a true morality, where Tata, the fashionable courtesan, leaning over her stairs as Toto the school-boy bears off her elderly lover, and laughing at him, cries out, "Toi, mon petit homme, je te repincerai dans quatre ou cinq ans!" And a cold and cutting stroke it is a little earlier in the same little comedy where Toto, left alone in Tata's parlor, negligently turns over her basket of visiting-cards and sees "names which he knew because he had learnt them by heart in his history of France." Still, in spite of this truth and morality, I do not advise the reading of _Toto chez Tata_ in young ladies' seminaries. Young ladies in Paris do not go to hear Madame Chaumont, for whom _Toto_ was written, nor is the Varietes, where it was played, a place where a girl can take her mother. It was at the Varietes in December, 1864, that the _Belle Helene_ was produced: this was the first of half a score of plays written by MM. Meilhac and Halevy for which M. Jacques Offenbach composed the music. Chief among these are _Barbe-bleue_, the _Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein_, the _Brigands_ and _Perichole_. When we recall the fact that these five operas are the most widely known, the most popular and by far the best of M. Offenbach's works, there is no need to dwell on his indebtedness to MM. Meilhac and Halevy, or to point out how important a thing the quality of the opera-book is to the composer of the score. These earlier librettos were admirably made: they are models of what a comic opera-book should be. I cannot well imagine a better bit of work of its kind than the _Belle Helene_ or the _Grande Duchesse_. Tried by the triple test of plot, characters and dialogue, they are nowhere wanting. Since MM. Meilhac and Halevy have ceased writing for M. Offenbach they have done two books for M. Charles Lecoq--the _Petit Duc_ and the _Grande Demoiselle_. These are rather light comic operas than true _operas-bouffes_, but if there is an elevation in the style of the music, there is an emphatic falling off in the quality of the words. From the _Grande Duchesse_ to the _Petit Duc_ is a great descent: the former was a genuine play, complete and self-contained--the latter is a careless trifle, a mere outline sketch for the composer to fill up. The story--akin in subject to Mr. Tom Taylor's fine historical drama _Clancarty_--is pretty, but there is no trace of the true poetry which made the farewell letter of Perichole so touching, or of the true comic force which projected General Bourn. _Carmen_, which, like _Perichole_, owes the suggestion of its plot and characters to Prosper Merimee, is