Nothing less than a progress from insularity to cosmopolitanism is the social enterprise in which the upper classes led the way, and in which those who are always ready to imitate their example have followed them. The fashion is not yet fully acclimatised. For that reason carping critics, unjustly perhaps, have suggested that English families who take their holiday at Boulogne-sur-Mer would do well not to carry with them on their return to their suburban homes in England the social usages which flourish in the Assembly Rooms of an Anglicized French watering-place. CHAPTER XVI 'THE PLAY'S THE THING' Summary of the agencies and incidents preparing the way for the revival of the theatre as a popular institution, Macready and his purifying influences inside the theatre. Charles Kean at the Princess's. Usefulness of Rugby and Eton associations to each of these respectively. Miss Faucit (Lady Martin); her last appearance at Drury Lane; her enduring influence on the profession. Mrs Boucicault, Miss Kate Terry, Mrs P. H. Lee, Miss Ellen Terry and others. Henry Irving; his first London hit at the St James's, afterwards at the Lyceum under Bateman. His success characterized. T. W. Robertson's plays. Other circumstances of the time favourable to the new popularity of the play. At the different seaside resorts fringing the greater part of southern England from Beachy Head to Penzance, by the new sort of life organized at Eastbourne, Hastings, and innumerable other places, one is reminded very practically that only twenty miles of intervening sea separate the French from the English coast. The British climate may be less favourable than that on the other side of the Straits for the open air existence of the French littoral. The more praiseworthy, therefore, and not the less persistent are the efforts of visitors and residents on the unsunny side of the Channel to acclimatize themselves to the _al fresco_ habits of Boulogne, Dieppe, Trouville, or Biarritz.