It will be objected that a study of such a system may tend to make the player mechanical, and also to cause all the members of a company to resemble one another too greatly: there is some truth in the objection. Still, this is an abuse not inseparable from the use. The intelligent mime fully recognizes the fact that the gestures proper to the members of one class of people are not necessarily suitable to those of another, and that there are individual differences as well. He distinguishes between the sober, and therefore striking, gesture of the Englishman and the unimpressive gesticulation of the meridional; between the poses of the king and attitudes of the peasant, and so on. The highly trained artist knows how, upon rare occasions, to produce a great effect by conscious breach of a rule. To argue against a use from a _needless_ abuse is not legitimate, a proposition dear to Jeremy Bentham. There is also a grave fallacy in the idea that gesture is less important in presenting an Englishman than a member of a gesticulative race, for vehement gesture is impressive in direct proportion to its rarity, and effects have been produced by the fine, slight movement of one of our actresses at a critical moment which surpassed in force anything possible if she had been lavish in gesture throughout. Need it be added that the training of the body insisted upon by the mime would cause some of our players to move more gracefully on the stage? Several of our popular players walk as if they had hired their limbs and not had time to become accustomed to them. Scenery at the French Plays One might almost say there is none. A foreign management at the New Royalty Theatre produced a number of works mounted in a fashion that would horrify an ordinary West End London manager, and yet the rather daring season was really successful. So much the better. Probably if the cost of production of each play had been ten times greater nobody's pleasure would have been appreciably increased and the receipts would not have advanced perceptibly. It is doubtful whether the scenery for the baker's dozen or so of plays cost as much as is often expended by our managers on a single work. Is there no lesson in this? Why, if an audience can be attracted, interested, and even delighted in the Soho house, though play and players are not aided by the expenditure of barrelfuls of money on the mounting, should it be deemed necessary to employ a small fortune every time a work is presented by our native managers? As far as I can judge, the French season, although triumphant, was not marked by the appearance of any prodigious star with whom we were not already familiar, nor were the new pieces of astounding quality.