When we have two original plays like PINERO'S _Second Mrs. Tanqueray_ and GRUNDY'S _Sowing the Wind_, we may congratulate ourselves that they do _not_ "do these things better in France." _Mrs. Tanqueray_ is a life-like tragedy, and _Sowing the Wind_ a life-like comedy. It was a pleasure to congratulate Mr. ALEXANDER at the St. James's on his choice of a piece, and of the company to suit it, especially on the engagement of Mrs. PATRICK CAMPBELL for the heroine; and now it is equally pleasant to congratulate a _confrère_ in literature, Mr. COMYNS CARR, on having made so eminently successful a _début_ in theatrical management, as he has done in choice of the piece and of the company to play it. [Illustration: A Portrait from M-Emery. Emery Powder and polish'd performance.] It is a canon of comedy-construction that from the first, the audience should be let into the secret of the _dénouement_, but that they should be puzzled as to the means by which that end is to be achieved. This play is an excellent example of the rule. Everybody knows who the heroine is from the moment of her appearance; but as to how she, the illegitimate daughter, is to be recognised and acknowledged by her father, this is the problem that no one except the dramatist, in the course of four acts, can solve. It is a very clever piece of workmanship. In these modern matter-of-fact realistic days, fancy the awful danger to any play in which a father has to discover his long-lost child! The strawberry mark on the left arm, the amulet, the duplicate miniature of the mother--these ways and means, and many others, must occur to the playgoer, and must have presented themselves at the outset to the author, flattering himself on his originality, as difficulties almost insuperable because so stagey, so worn threadbare, so out of date. Over these difficulties Mr. GRUNDY has triumphed, and with him triumph the actors and the stage-manager; as, for the most part, except when there is a needless conventional "taking the centre" for supposed effect, the stage management is as admirable as the acting and the dialogue, which is saying a great deal, but not a bit too much. [Illustration: BRANDON AND MONKEY BRAND-ON. _Mr. Brandon Thomas Brabazon_ (_to Cyril Maude Watkin_). "I know that face. I've seen it on the hoardings." _Watkin_ (_faintly_). "It won't wash!" [_Collapses._ ]