what a compliment that was to the whole corps,--actors, actresses, and scene-painter!--and how impossible it would be to make the same complaint of an English play! "But," I have been told by theatrical people, "such an arrangement is all very well in French vaudevilles, where one scene lasts through an act; but it will not do for English plays, with their constant scene-shifting." I grant it is less convenient to the stage-manager than the present wretched assembly of screens; but it is not impracticable in any play. Witness the melodramas which are the delight of the patrons of the minor Paris theatres,--_pieces a spectacle en 4 actes et 24 tableaux_, that is, twenty-four changes of scene. I remember sitting through one which was so deadly stupid that nothing but the ingenuity of the stage-arrangements made it endurable. Side-scenes dropped down into their places,--"flats" fell through the stage or were drawn up out of sight,--trees and rocks rose out of the earth,--in a word, scenery that looked like reality, and not like canvas, was disposed and cleared away with such marvellous rapidity that I forgot to yawn over the play. Attention to these matters is almost unknown with us: perhaps, in strict justice, I ought to say was unknown until very lately. Within a few years, one or two of our theatres have profited by the example set by stage-managers abroad. At Wallack's, in New York, _rooms_ have to a great extent taken the place of the old _screens_; and only the other night at the Boston Museum I saw an arrangement of scenery which really helped the illusion.