and pure-minded people who bring genius and virtue to the profession of which they are bright, shining ornaments. CHAPTER II. A THEATRE OF SHAKESPEARE'S DAY. If some of the old Greek dramatists could shake together their ashes and assume life, they would open their ancient eyes to look upon the beauty, comfort, and charming symmetry of the first-class theatre of the present day. The ancients were at first obliged to put up with representations given upon rude carts; afterwards stone theatres were constructed, with the performers placed in a pit in the middle space, but no such effort at decoration, or to provide for the convenience of spectators, was to be seen as is to be found everywhere now. The plays, too, while they may have been delightful to our Hellenic predecessors, would hardly draw a corporal's guard at the present time, when spectacular melodrama is all the rage, and the only chorus the average theatre-goer cares to see is the aggregation of pretty girls in entrancing tights, and with the utmost scantiness of clothes to hide their personal charms, who sing the concerted music in comic opera. This is the kind of chorus that sends a thrill of ecstacy through the heart, and around the resplendent dome of thought of the much-maligned modern bald-head. The strophe and anti-strophe of the ancient drama would set the nineteenth century citizen crazy as a wild man of Borneo. The ancient drama was gradually replaced by the ecclesiastical drama,--the mystery or miracle play,--an example of which remains to us in the celebrated "Passion Play," performed at Obarammergan at stated intervals, and over the projected production of which, in this country, there was so much trouble that the play was never produced. In this style of drama, events in the life of the Savior, or the great mysteries of the church, were the topics dealt with by the saintly playwright, and the actors personated characters ranging from the Devil up through the various grades of saintliness and angelic beatification to God Almighty himself. The miracle play flourished during the middle ages, and survived down almost to the Elizabethan period, when Shakespeare appeared upon the scene; and with his advent there came a revolution, the outgrowth of which is the present perfect and beautiful theatre. The change in the style of plays brought a change in the style of places for their representations, and while the Bard of Avon was making his reputation in the dramatic line, the Globe and Blackfriars were leading the way to advancement in the matter of theatrical structures. They had performances on Sunday in those olden times, and while good Christians were worshipping God in their sanctuaries, the undevout Britons of the "golden age" were worshipping Thespis in his.