Lastly, there was a vagrant troubadour with a gift for the pianoforte. He was called _Prince Louis_, and firmly held the opinion that he alone appreciated the Queen's qualities and could offer her a suitable solace. He had his simple dramatic uses, and by an elopement (as innocent, on her part, as it was arbitrary) enabled the lady to return to the arms of her desperate husband, for whom it appears that she had always entertained a profound adoration. What they all really needed for the correction of their little egoisms was a Big War. That is the only lesson that I could draw from Mr. BESIER'S play, and I don't believe he meant me to draw even that. Such originality as it offered was to be found in the soul of the young King, with its distraction between two loyalties; its despairing conviction that virtue as its own reward was not good enough; its threatened rebound to the primrose paths which his father of never-to-be-forgotten memory had trodden before him. Mr. ARTHUR WONTNER looked the part and played it with a very quiet dignity. Sir GEORGE ALEXANDER, as an imperial uncle, of no particular nationality, filled his familiar _rôle_ of _amicus curiæ_; a man of sixty and much dalliance in the past, but with his heart--what was left of it--in the right place. His facial growth (a little in the manner of Mr. MAURICE HEWLETT) suited him well--far better indeed than the frock coat of the final Act. He was admirable throughout (except in one rather stuffy homily where he was not quite certain of his own views); but I could have done with much more of those lighter phases in which he excels. It was the same with the pleasant humour of Miss FRANCES IVOR as the Queen-Mother, which was sadly curtailed. Miss MARIE LÖHR played the young Queen with extraordinary sincerity, notably in one of the many scenes in which she lamented her lost child. Here, if this tedious baby had not failed to touch my imagination, I must have been honestly moved. If we suffered any doubt as to the reality of her grief, this was due to the disturbing beauty of the frocks in which she gave utterance to it. Anyhow they totally failed to support the charge of dowdiness which had been freely brought against the Queen-Mother's _régime_. Finally, that native air of frank loyalty which Mr. BEN WEBSTER'S gifts as an actor are impotent to disguise gave the lie to his thankless part as _Prince Louis_. Nor did the superiority of his morning-coat go well with the sinister touch of melodrama in his set speeches. The villain of the piece should not have been _plus royaliste que le roi_, who was content to wear a lounge serge suit. If Mr. BESIER'S play achieves the popular favour of which, as I understand, it has already secured the promise, it will not be on account of its intrinsic merits, though it has its good points; it will be due in part to the excellence of the performance, and in part to that innocent snobbery which is latent in the typical British bosom.