May it not be that a great trouble of our drama has been the failure to recognize the fact that the picture is just as important an element of the stage as the dialogue? Every French actress receives a thorough training in pantomime; in America anyone with a sensitive eye will squirm under the inept and ugly line-compositions presented by our actresses in their gestures. And as for stage-setting, the height of our ambition has seemed to be to get a door that will really slam, or to fill the stage with pink apple-blossoms--the audience will always applaud pink. The resolution of these crude attempts into something that really makes a good appeal to the eye is no new thing; but for a long time we have not been ready for the work of Reinhardt or Gordon Craig on the one side or of the Russian Ballet on the other. Now the moving-pictures are at once educating our eyes to watch drama, and are undermining the support of old-fashioned plays which, through their very excellent mediocrity, prevented the encroachment of new ideas. Let us go to the theatres next fall prepared to trace the beginnings of a new stage art in this country; in the meantime, however, not hoping to escape the flood of cheap and artistically vicious stuff with which the commercial managers and producers will attempt to drown our sensibilities. There is more active charity in the egoism of a strenuous, far-seeing soul than in the devotion of a soul that is helpless and blind.--_Maeterlinck._ Book Discussion The Gospel According to Moore _Ave_, by George Moore. [D. Appleton and Company, New York.] Mr. George Moore has finished his autobiographic triology, _Hail and Farewell_, and has shaken the dust of Ireland from his feet. The Celtic Renaissance must make its way without his help or hindrance. He came, he pondered, he withdrew. In these astonishing volumes we have the whole story of his adventures and his thoughts, and an unrivalled series of impressionistic portraits of his friends. We see Yeats in his long cloak, looking like a melancholy rook; Lady Gregory, the poet's devoted disciple; Edward Martyn and his soul; Plunkett and Gill, the Bouvard and Pécuchet of real life; AE "who settles everybody's difficulties and consoles the afflicted"; Colonel Moore, the author's brother; and we catch an occasional glimpse of Arthur Symons, Synge, James Stephens, and many others. But the book is very different from the ordinary _Sunlights and Shadows of My Short Life_. It is a remarkable piece of self-portraiture and an explanation of the author's attitude toward art and the Christian religion.