Irving has collected his various addresses in a charming little volume, “The Drama,” 1893. Here, in an exceedingly persuasive and graceful style, he has expounded the principles of his art. On every point he has something to say, and all is marked by judiciousness and a temperate reserve. He does not adopt Diderot’s well-known theory. How true, for instance, is this: “Nor do I think that servility to archæology on the stage is an unmixed good. Correctness of costume is admirable and necessary up to a certain point, but when it ceases to be ‘as wholesome as sweet’ it should, I think, be sacrificed. The nicest discretion is needed in the use of the materials which are nowadays at the disposal of the manager. Music, painting, architecture, costume, have all to be employed, with a strict regard to the production of an artistic whole in which no element shall be obtrusive.” When ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ was produced, there was a scene representing a cedar walk, and a critic discovered that there were no cedars in England until fifty years later, on which he comments—“Absolute realism on the stage is not always desirable, any more than the photographic reproduction of Nature can claim to rank with the highest art.” A little bit of pleasant comedy is found in a recent speech of his at the dinner of the Cabdrivers’ Benevolent Association in June last. He had always a friendly feeling for this hard-worked body of men, as he told his audience autobiographically: “I have spent a great part of my life in cabs. There was a time, indeed, when a hansom, by a slight stretch of the picturesque, might have been described as my address. That was in the days of youth and high spirits. But there comes a moment in the experience of all of us when the taste for adventure is satiated, when we are no longer eager to sit under the charioteer of the sun, and snatch a fearful joy from sharp corners and a sudden congestion of the traffic. So when the decisive moment came for me I dropped the hansom and took up with the growler. I remember that my first appearance in that staid and unambitious vehicle excited a certain amount of feeling amongst my old friends the hansom cabmen. There were letters of remonstrance. One correspondent, as genial a humorist as Gentleman Joe, hinted that to be seen in a growler was equivalent to being dead, and I think he offered to paint my epitaph on the back. I must say that I am very comfortable in a growler, except when the bottom drops out almost as suddenly as if it were a gold mine. That accident once happened to a friend of mine whose professional business compelled him to make a quick change of dress in the cab, and as it was a light summer evening the passers-by were astonished to see a pair of white legs running under the vehicle, and not apparently connected with the horse.”