Miss DE GONCOURT may be said to have served an amateur apprenticeship to the art of the playwright; it had begun at school with Charades; it had progressed through several seasons of amateur theatricals; it had culminated in five Acts of blank verse; and apart from the epistolary appeals that had been made to London Managers, to save the reputation of native modern dramatists by its immediate production, Miss ELMIRA JENKS had discussed the work in a certain lady's journal, to which she contributed, assuring the world that _Before the Dawn_ was worthy of the noblest efforts of dramatic poetry. Miss DE GONCOURT was also put forward as an honour to womanhood, having preferred the higher life of Art to the lower mission of Matrimony; and all that she and her friends now desired, was a fitting opportunity for the demonstration of the integrity of her ambition, which was to follow in the footsteps of Mrs. INCHBALD, JOANNA BAILLIE, and other distinguished lady dramatists. Miss DE GONCOURT was a spinster and an orphan, with a settled income of three hundred and fifty pounds a year; and she sat in her little Bedford Park study from day to day, with a pen in her hand, and a smile on her lips, a smile of hope and confidence. It was a dainty room, with a grey dimity dado, that marked off a few old engravings of poetic and dramatic subjects. The over-mantel was green and white, with busts of SHAKSPEARE, SHELLEY, JOAN OF ARC, and FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, upon its little shelves. There were bookcases and cabinets here and there, containing favourite authors and relics of great actresses, such as hair-pins used by HELEN FAUCIT, a shoestring belonging to RACHEL, and a brooch which had been worn by Mrs. SIDDONS. Had not these geniuses, watched, waited and suffered? Then what right had she to be impatient? It must have been a sweet nature that could philosophise thus in face of an entire cabinet of rejected plays, bound in white morocco, emblematic of their purity, though destined, it might be, to revolutionise the present frivolous stage as soon as the production of _Before the Dawn_ should send both actors and managers to their author's door ravenous for the right to give her other works to an astonished and delighted public.