of actors and actresses of a bygone time were paralleled or exceeded by those of other classes. At present such sources of interest are rare in any class, and we are obliged to have recourse to sensational novels or the records of crime. Future biographers are no more likely to have such a subject as Samuel Johnson than such a one as George Frederick Cooke; while both Boswell and Dunlap, had they written in our day, would probably have been much more reticent and much less amusing. We cannot therefore agree with Mr. Fitzgerald in thinking that the colorless character of the few theatrical biographies that have appeared in recent times is to be ascribed to the decay of the art of acting and the lack of an ideal involving a long and arduous struggle in the attainment of eminence. In France, as he justly observes, the history of the profession has never possessed the same adventurous interest, the lives of French actors showing in general a mere record of steady and regular progression, such as is found in other professions. The stage in France, as in all Catholic countries, lay under a heavier ban than in England; but on this very account the actors constituted a separate class, having little contact with society, receiving few recruits from without, regulated by fixed usages, and confined to a particular groove. In England, on the contrary, the stage was an outlet for irregular talent, impatient of steady labor or severe restrictions, and captivated by the freedom and diversity of a career which, beginning in vagrancy, might lead at a single bound to a brilliant and enviable position. Hence the biographies of English players, taken collectively, offer a vast store of amusing anecdotes, illustrative not only of the history of the stage, but of personal character and social manners. Yet books of this kind; though read with avidity on their first appearance, have naturally fallen into neglect. Like most other biographies, they are overloaded with details that have no abiding interest, and few readers of the present day are tempted to explore the mass for themselves. It was, however, no very arduous task to sift out the more valuable relics and dispose them in proper order, and we can only wonder that Mr. Fitzgerald was not anticipated in the performance of it by some earlier collector. Gait's _Lives of the Players_ and Dr. Doran's _History of the English Stage_ have left this particular field almost wholly unworked, and it is one for which Mr. Fitzgerald was well fitted, both by his previous labors and knowledge of the soil, and by his practiced dexterity in the use of the necessary implements. He has accordingly produced a volume which may either be read consecutively or dipped into at random with the certainty of entertainment and without risk of tedium. Among the sources from which his material is drawn he assigns the first place to the _Memoirs of Tate Wilkinson_ and its sequel, _The Wandering