It is, in any time, a noble achievement--one too much praised in words, too little sought in deeds--to bring home and make vital to the human heart the sanctity and beauty of love. The actor who does this can do no more. Pictorial art upon the stage attains to a marvellous height when it presents such a scene as that of the River of Souls and the reunion of long-sundered souls, in this romantic, imaginative, and beautiful play. Such an achievement in the dramatic art as the setting before the public of such a play and such a performance as Blanche Bates gave of its heroine vindicate the beneficent utility of the Theatre, because it cheers and ennobles, and thus practically helps society, through the ministration of beauty. This is a hard world. Almost everybody in it struggles beneath burdens of care and sorrow. Multitudes of human beings dwell in trouble and suffering. An imperative need of our race is the strength of patience and the light of hope. Dramatic art, or any art, which satisfies that need, or even remotely helps to satisfy it, is a blessing. The rest is little, if at all, better than a curse. There was fine acting in “The Darling of the Gods” besides that of Miss Bates. The part of _Zakkuri_, the _War Minister_,--a callous, remorseless, cold villain, of the Duke of Alva type,--is the main source of action in the drama, and it is elaborately and vividly drawn. It was played by George Arliss, who gave in it a thrilling incarnation of dangerous force and inveterate wickedness, almost humorous in its icy depravity: he had an exceptional success, even for an actor who always acts well. And there are many splendid imaginative and dramatic passages in this play besides those which have been particularly examined. As set upon the stage by Belasco it was a spectacle of superb opulence, surpassing all its predecessors in wealth of color and beauty of detail. In the Scene of the Night Watch at the gates; in that of the stealthy, nocturnal search for _Kara_, outside the lodge of the _Princess_, and in that of _Yo-San’s_ supplication for her lover’s life there is the very poetry of terror. Some of the expedients employed had been used in earlier dramas,--such as “Patrie” and “Tosca,”--but they were so freshly handled that they were made newly terrible with an atmosphere of grisly dread. Belasco, in short, offered to his public in this production a true dramatic work of novelty, variety, and scenic splendor, extraordinarily rich in the element of histrionic art; an offering that was symmetrical and magnificent, prompting a memory of the old days of “Pizarro,” “The Ganges,” and “The Bronze Horse,” but proving that his day also was golden and that Aladdin’s Lamp had not been lost. THE CREATION OF DRAMATIC EFFECTS.--DIFFICULTIES WITH THE RIVER OF SOULS.