It is useless to attempt a defence of the present system by telling me that a different plan of remunerating the dramatic author was adopted in former times, and that a different plan is also practised on the French stage. I am not discussing which plan is best, or which plan is worst. I am only dealing with the plain fact, that the present stage-estimate of the author is barbarously low--an estimate which men who had any value for literature, any idea of its importance, any artist-like sympathy with its great difficulties, and its great achievements, would be ashamed to make. I prove that fact by reference to the proceedings of a better past time, and by a plain appeal to the market-value of all kinds of literature, off the stage, at the present time; and I leave the means of effecting a reform to those who are bound in common honour and common justice to make the reform. It is not my business to re-adjust the commercial machinery of theatres; I don't sit in the treasury, and handle the strings of the moneybags. I say that the present system is a base one towards literature, and that the history of the past, and the experience of the present, prove it to be so. All the reasoning in the world which tries to convince us that a wrong is necessary, will not succeed in proving that wrong to be right. Having now established the existence of the abuse, it is easy enough to get on to the consequences that have arisen from it. At the present low rate of remuneration, a man of ability wastes his powers if he writes for the stage--unless he is prepared to put himself out of the category of authors, by turning manager and actor, and taking a theatre for himself. There are men still in existence, who occasionally write for the stage, for the love and honour of their Art. Once, perhaps, in two or three years, one of these devoted men will try single-handed to dissipate the dense dramatic fog that hangs over the theatre and the audience. For the brief allotted space of time, the one toiling hand lets in a little light, unthanked by the actors, unaided by the critics, unnoticed by the audience. The time expires--the fog gathers back--the toiling hand disappears. Sometimes it returns once more bravely to the hard, hopeless work: and out of all the hundreds whom it has tried to enlighten, there shall not be one who is grateful enough to know it again.