It is more or less an easy artifice for the dramatist to reduce his hero to the verge of despair just as his heroine is conveniently near to save him from leaping over a precipice; but artifice becomes art when the impalpable emotions of a nature lost almost to its own consciousness begin to be called from diffusion and given direction and meaning. While the characterization of Perth is not altogether free from strained sentiment, one recognizes in it a higher achievement than went to the making of the more spectacular crises of the play. The dramatic materials of _El Dorado_ are in the main skilfully handled, and there is logical congruity in the situations as they evolve, assuming the premise of the plot. As an acting play, however, it would require the further introduction of women characters, Beatrix sustaining alone, in its present cast, the feminine element of the drama. As to the play as literature, as poetry, there is much to commend, and somewhat to deplore. If it remain as literature, it must contain elements that transcend those of its action; if a well-developed plot were literature, then many productions of the stage that are purely ephemeral would take their place as works of art. Between the dramatic and the theatrical there is a nice distinction, and only an artist may wholly avoid the pitfalls of the latter. Mr. Torrence’s drama seems to me to blend the two qualities. For illustration the following outpouring of Coronado, when he returns for a last hour with Beatrix, then disguising to follow his army, and finds her faithless to the tryst, is purely melodramatic. The Friar Ubeda reminds him that the trumpets call him, whereupon Coronado exclaims: It is no call, but rather do their sounds Lash me like brazen whips away from her. They shriek two names to me, Honour and Hell; They drive me with two words, Duty and Death. These are the things that I can only find Outside her arms. In the same scene, however, occurs this fine passage, compact of hopelessness, and having in it the whole heart-history of Perth, who speaks it. He is urged by the friar to hasten that they may join the expedition as it passes the walls: PERTH. It would be useless. UBEDA. In what way? PERTH. If to go would be an ill, I need not hasten; it will come to me. And if a good, they will have gone too far; I could not overtake them. This passage recalls another memorably fine,—that in which Perth upon his release would return to his dungeon, being oppressed by the light: I seem to have to bear the sky’s whole arch, Like Atlas, on my shoulders.