In accounting for the approximation as to popularity of a London to a Paris première which to-day so much impresses the foreign visitor, other circumstances must be remembered. During the last decade or two, especially since the collapse of the second French Empire, the English capital has been, to an entirely new extent, the pleasure ground of the world, and at all seasons of the year contains a large floating population of strangers, Anglo-American or European, as well as of British subjects visiting for a few days from other parts of the Kingdom, the capital on the Thames. These birds of passage seldom possess a large social acquaintance in the capital; the men among them do not always belong to clubs; the ladies are too busy shopping to invite, or to make, calls; the theatre is thus for a constantly increasing proportion of those who sleep within the bills of mortality the easiest and the most attractive form of pleasure. Hence as might be expected, the far more amusing repertory of the Victorian theatre at the end of this century than at any previous epoch. With a Pinero, or a Grundy, to mention only two typical names; with pieces so diverting as _Charley's Aunt_, or _Bootles' Baby_, to mention only one or two representative plays, the Englishman whose chief pastime the play has become finds laughter moving relaxation as effectually, more economically, and to himself a great deal more intelligibly within the roar of his own Strand, than by travelling to a Paris boulevard. The integral part now occupied by the play in the life of the most respectable portion of the middle class is shown by the spacious theatres that have lately risen in such decorous suburbs of the metropolis as Brixton. Its utility as an agency of mental improvement and moral teaching is suggested by the surprising success of the new religious drama that beginning perhaps with the _Judah_ of H. A. Jones, has reached its climax of well deserved success in _The Sign of the Cross_ of Wilson Barrett. The suburban theatres have not as yet provided a great field for original talent in the playwright; as might be expected, their patrons seem to prefer pieces that have already received the stamp of public approval. While musical comedies indicate an increasingly popular compromise between Drury Lane and the _Alhambra_, the romantic drama has once more proved to be not less attractive than when three decades since _The Corsican Brothers_ first filled the Princess's with enthusiastic audiences. This perhaps at the present moment is the latest of all the successful revivals on the English stage. The plays respectively founded on novels, _The Prisoner of Zenda_, and _Under the Red Robe_, are not only above the average as to merit, but show that the popularity of the cup-and-saucer drama of Albery and Robertson is consistent with a vigorous affection for the melodrama which in Bulwer's _Lady of Lyons_, and in Boucicault's _Colleen Bawn_ once absorbed the enthusiasm of the pit.