All those who have not yet read these journals, and prefer doing so in English, should get Miss Blind’s volumes. There they will find this ‘human document’ most vigorously translated into their native tongue. It, perhaps, sounds better in French. One remembers George Eliot’s tale of the lady who tried to repeat in English the pathetic story of a French mendicant--‘J’ai vu le sang de mon père’--but failed to excite sympathy, owing to the hopeless realism of Saxon speech. But though better in French, the journal is interesting in English. Whether, like the dreadful Dean, you regard man as an odious race of vermin, or agree with an erecter spirit that he is a being of infinite capacity, you will find food for your philosophy, and texts for your sermons, in the ‘Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff.’ SIR JOHN VANBRUGH. Jeremy Collier begins his famous and witty, though dreadfully overdone, ‘Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage’ with the following spirited words: ‘The business of Plays is to recommend Virtue and discountenance Vice; to show the Uncertainty of Human Greatness, the sudden turns of Fate, and the unhappy conclusions of Violence and Injustice; ’tis to expose the singularities of Pride and Fancy, to make Folly and Falsehood contemptible, and to bring everything that is ill under Infamy and Neglect.’ He then adds: ‘This design has been oddly pursued by the English Stage;’ and so he launches his case. Sir John Vanbrugh, who fared very badly at the doctor’s hands, replied--and, on the whole, with great spirit and considerable success--in a pamphlet entitled ‘A Short Vindication of “The Relapse” and “The Provok’d Wife” from Immorality and Profaneness.’ In this reply he strikes out this bold apophthegm: ‘The business of Comedy is to show people what they should do, by representing them upon the stage, doing what they should not.’ He continues with much good sense: ‘Nor is there any necessity a philosopher should stand by, like an interpreter at a puppet-show, to explain the moral to the audience. The mystery is seldom so deep but the pit and boxes can dive into it, and ’tis their example out of the playhouse that chiefly influences the galleries. The stage is a glass for the world to view itself in; people ought, therefore, to see themselves as they are; if it makes their faces too fair, they won’t know they are dirty, and, by consequence, will neglect to wash them. If, therefore, I have showed “Constant” upon the stage what generally the thing called a fine gentleman is off it, I think I have done what I should do. I have laid open his vices as well as his virtues; ’tis the business of the audience to observe where his flaws lessen his value, and, by considering the deformity of his blemishes, become sensible how much a finer thing he would be without them.’