_Deirdre_, by A.E., _The Racing Lug_, by Mr. Cousins, _The Foundations_, by Mr. Ryan, and my _Pot of Broth_, and _Cathleen ni Houlihan_, were repeated, but no new plays were produced until March 14th, when Lady Gregory’s _Twenty-five_ and my _Hour-Glass_, drew a good audience. On May 2nd the _Hour-Glass_, _Twenty-five_, _Cathleen ni Houlihan_, _Pot of Broth_, and _Foundations_ were performed before the Irish Literary Society in London, at the Queen’s Gate Hall, and plays and players were generously commended by the Press—very eloquently by the critic of _The Times_. It is natural that we should be pleased with this praise, and that we should wish others to know of it, for is it not a chief pleasure of the artist to be commended in subtle and eloquent words? The critic of _The Times_ has seen many theatres and he is, perhaps, a little weary of them, but here in Ireland there are one or two critics who are so much in love, or pretend to be so much in love, with the theatre as it is, that they complain when we perform on a stage two feet wider than Molière’s that it is scarce possible to be interested in anything that is played on so little a stage. We are to them foolish sectaries who have revolted against that orthodoxy of the commercial theatre, which is so much less pliant than the orthodoxy of the church, for there is nothing so passionate as a vested interest disguised as an intellectual conviction. If you inquire into its truth it becomes as angry as a begging-letter writer, when you find some hole in that beautiful story about the five children and the broken mangle. In Ireland, wherever the enthusiasts are shaping life, the critic who does the will of the commercial theatre can but stand against his lonely pillar defending his articles of belief among a wild people, and thinking mournfully of distant cities, where nobody puts a raw potato into his pocket when he is going to hear a musical comedy.