Sarcey reminds his readers of what he said of it the Monday after the first performance. "I will not say"--he quotes himself--"that Mme. Plessy is indifferent. With her intelligence, her natural gifts, her great situation, her immense authority over the public, one cannot be indifferent in anything. She is therefore not indifferently bad. She is bad to a point which cannot be expressed, and which would be afflicting for dramatic art if it were not that in this great shipwreck there rise to the surface a few floating fragments of the finest qualities that nature has ever bestowed upon an artist." Mme. Plessy retired from the stage six months ago, and it may be said that the void produced by this event is irreparable. There is not only no prospect, but there is no hope of filling it up. The present conditions of artistic production are directly hostile to the formation of actresses as consummate and as complete as Mme. Plessy. One may not expect to see her like, any more than one may expect to see a new manufacture of old lace and old brocade. She carried off with her something that the younger generation of actresses will consistently lack--a certain largeness of style and robustness of art. (These qualities are in a modified degree those of Mlle. Favart.) But if the younger actresses have the success of Mlles. Croizette and Sarah Bernhardt, will they greatly care whether they are not "robust"? These young ladies are children of a later and eminently contemporary type, according to which an actress undertakes not to interest, but to fascinate. They are charming--"awfully" charming; strange, eccentric, and imaginative. It would be needless to speak specifically of Mlle. Croizette; for although she has very great attractions, I think she may (by the cold impartiality of science) be classified as a secondary, a less inspired, and (to use the great word of the day) a more "brutal" Sarah Bernhardt. (Mlle. Croizette's "brutality" is her great card.) As for Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt, she is simply, at present, in Paris, one of the great figures of the day. It is hard to imagine a more brilliant embodiment of feminine success. It is hard to imagine a young woman leading a more complete and multifold existence. The intellectual fermentation of a productive, creative (and most ambitious) artist, the splendors of a princess, the glories of a celebrity, and various other matters besides--these are a sufficiently interesting combination. But as an artist, as I have said, Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt would almost deserve a chapter for herself. HENRY JAMES, JR. MISS MISANTHROPE. BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY. CHAPTER VII. ON THE BRIDGE.