outside world, to appropriate the discoveries of Layard and the revelations of Science to its own uses,--illustrations, too, of the importance of the individual Kean, as well as of the crowd of clever subordinates. That the theatre feels this reflex influence, that it appreciates all that is going on around it, that it is not asleep, that it is penetrated with the spirit of the century, whether that spirit be good or evil, the selection of plays now popular is another proof. In France, where the success of the histrionic art now culminates, a contemporaneous drama is flourishing, the absolute society of the day is represented. That society has faults, and the stage mirrors them. "La Dame aux Camélias," "Les Filles de Marbre," "Le Demi-Monde" reflect exactly the peculiarities of the life they aim to imitate. And these very plays, whose influence is so often condemned, would never have had the popularity they have attained in nearly every city of the civilized world, had there not been Marguerite Gautiers and Traviatas outside of Paris as well as in it. Another attempt, perhaps not an entirely successful one, but still a significant attempt, has been made in this country to produce a contemporaneous drama. "Jessie Brown" and "The Poor of New York," and other plays directly daguerreotyping ordinary incidents, at any rate show that the drama is an art that responds instantly to the pulses of the time. But it ia not necessary for the stage to daguerreotype; it mirrors more truly when it embodies the spirit. And never before was there an age whose spirit was more theatrical, in the best sense of the term; full of outside expression, but also full of inside feeling; working, accomplishing, putting into actual form its ideas; incarnating its passions; intellectual, yet passionate; lofty in imagination, yet practical in exemplification; showy, but significantly showy,--theatrical. An art, then, that is all this, surely expresses as no other art does or can the character of the nineteenth century,--surely is the representative art. * * * * * ROBA DI ROMA. THE EVIL EYE AND OTHER SUPERSTITIONS. I have already, in a former article, spoken of some of the superstitions belonging to the Church which are prevalent in Italy; but there are other, and, so to speak, _lay_ superstitions, which also claim a place,--and to them this chapter shall be dedicated.