The pessimist may suggest that it is hardly worth while to endeavour to become such an Admirable Crichton, that the labour will not be sufficiently remunerated, that the existing British Drama does not demand or deserve criticism by such cultured experts. There are few of us fully qualified, according to the standard put forward in these lines, and it may be added, without anything in the nature of mock-modesty, that the author is well aware of the fact that he cannot be reckoned among the few. His Knowledge of Fashionable Society A passage in _Lady Huntworth's Experiment_ did not earn the laugh deserved by it. Captain Dorvaston was supposed to read a passage from _The Special Monthly Journal_, to this effect: "The shield bore for device a bar sinister, with _fleur-de-lys rampant_"; then he said, "That ain't heraldry." Lady Huntworth replied, "Yes, it is; Family Heraldry," and he laughed. The passage in the play brought forward vividly the thought that those who really live in the aristocratic world may smile at our high-life dramas just as they do at the stories that appear concerning the nobility in obscure "family" papers. There is, and during a long time has been, a mania among playwrights for putting aristocratic characters upon the stage. It may be that this is due to the snobbishness of players, who, in comedy, love to represent a lord: they can be kings and queens only in tragedies; or to that of the audience, which likes to see the representation of the nobility; or, again, it may be caused by the snobbishness of the dramatist and his wish to suggest that he knows all about the "upper succles." It need not be assumed that we are much worse in this respect than our neighbours across that Channel which some desire to have destroyed and so nullify the famous John of Gaunt speech. In books and plays the Gallic writers are almost as fond of presenting the French aristocracy as are our dramatists and novelists of writing works concerning the British Peerage. Even putting the actual peerage aside, the question is important, whether the pictures in fiction--particularly in drama--of what one may call Belgravia or Mayfair are correct. We critics hardly know; and it may be a solecism to suggest that the same applies to the studies of the Faubourg St Germain. Perhaps that famous faubourg has lost its distinction.