the well remembered ringmaster and clown of our childhood, that we all laughed at it, wise as well as foolish. I remember well during the second run of the venerable Herzog and his slave, talking to a very acute and learned gentleman--a man of the world too--who actually had never seen the "Black Crook" till the previous evening, and he was convulsed with laughter every time he recalled the figure of the man who shouts, "I want to go home!" That figure remained with him out of all the play, in his memory, as something irresistibly comic, just as the weird and uncanny elements remained with the minds of smaller calibre. For the children who saw it, I will venture to say that the parts which pleased them most were the parts which made the success of the play, the obtrusion of broad farce in one place, the beauty of the grotto scene and really poetical dancing of Bonfanti in another. Strange that of all the dancers, many more agile and supple, no one should ever have replaced Bonfanti, or even come near her in the "Black Crook." She gave the play what it lacked, poetical beauty and grace, and thus completed the secret of its success, which was--_variety_. Its rivals and followers tried to beat up the narrow channel that leads to public favor, in one or two long tacks, and ended by running aground, while the "Black Crook" kept hands at the braces all the time, and "went about" as often as the water showed a symptom of shoaling. The same secret of _variety_ accounts for the great success of Boucicault's Irish dramas as compared with those of other dramatists, and even with his own plays on other subjects. The regular old-fashioned Irish drama had interest only to an Irishman. It dealt with rebellions of half a century and more gone by, stamped out, and in which few took interest outside of Ireland. A certain element, that of traditional abuse of the traditional Briton, who was supposed to be always wandering over the United States with his pockets full of _Berrritish gold_, trying to corrupt patriotic Americans and regain King George's colonies, gave a certain interest to the Irish drama in America for the half century before the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument, but that faded out as time obliterated early jealousies. Then came Boucicault and did a wonderful thing, taking hackneyed and ridiculous Fenianism and making out of it one of the greatest successes of modern times, that bids fair to remain a stock play for years--the "Shaughraun." In "Arrah-na-Pogue" he took the old thin story of the Irish patriot of '98, and achieved an equal success, while in the "Colleen Bawn" he made a tremendous hit with even poorer materials. The secret of the success of all three plays is found in _variety_, produced by contrasting the broad unctuous humor and sharp wit of the Irish peasant, familiar to the English-speaking world, with the quiet delicacy and refinement of the Irish upper classes, by using a few