_Robert Blaine_ MR. H. B. IRVING. _Harry Blaine_ MR. REGINALD OWEN.] Another weakness, common enough where an author wants to show a variety of types and excuses himself from the trouble of assorting them, was to be seen in the extreme improbability of the friendship between _Blaine_ and _Sir Adalbert Schmaltz_. These two were always staying in one another's houses yet there never could have been the smallest of tastes in common between the dour and moody financier and the light-hearted consumer of lager beer and _delikatessen_. But I prefer, if you please, to dwell upon the shining virtues of Mr. VACHELL'S _Searchlights_. With the exception of an interlude or two of needless triviality--_Lady Schmaltz's_ sobbing scene, for instance--the essentials of the tragic theme held us grimly in their grasp. But always we could find relief in the author's humanity, revealed not only in the passionate devotion of the mother's heart, but in the persuasive character of her boy, and the unaffected quality of his relations both to her and to the girl who wanted his love. Mr. VACHELL would be the first to acknowledge, and generously, how much he owes to the really remarkable performance, as _Mrs. Blaine_, of Miss FAY DAVIS, who can never before have accomplished so high an achievement. But the matter was there for her clever hands to shape, and that was the author's doing. Mr. HARRY IRVING'S, too, was a fine performance, though, from the moment of his entrance, a figure of sinister portent, he lacked all contrast of light and shade. But, to be just, that was hardly in the part, as made--deliberately, so it seemed--for those particular methods of which he is the master. As for Mr. HOLMAN CLARK, if all Teutons, naturalized or other, were like his _Sir Adalbert Schmaltz_ (or _Sir Keith Howard_, as he called himself after the War began, on the principle that the best was good enough for him) I should have small ground of quarrel with the race. But how this joyous German ever came to wear a kilt and own a deer-forest I cannot hope to understand, for there was no hint of Semitic origin in his face or composition. Mr. REGINALD OWEN made a most human soldier-boy, and I shall never want to meet a Guardsman with a better manner or an easier sense of humour. I remark, by the way, that young _Blaine_ is the second stage-hero (the first was in _The Cost_) whom the War has affected in the head. Miss MARGERY MAUDE, though she had the rather ungrateful part of a girl who is quite ready, thank you, to be loved as soon as you feel like it, played, as always, with a very perfect tact and charm. Finally, Miss KATE BISHOP was her dear old self, and Mr. TOM REYNOLDS' sketch of a solicitor was as bright as it was brief.