This sad condition of theatrical illusions cannot be regarded otherwise than strange when it is recorded that decorations were of a higher order in the reign of Louis XIV. Saint-Evremond is authority for the statement that the sun and moon were so well represented at the French opera during this period that the ambassador of Guinea, who assisted at one of the performances, was decoyed into leaning forward in his box and religiously saluting the orbs. Had Rousseau lived to the present day, the wonders and mysteries of our stage would have made his great heart leap within him. Modern art and modern mechanism have brought stage representations so close to nature that the scenes seem to be small sections, either of country or city, mountain or vale, lifted from the face of the world and placed in all their beauty at the stage-end of the theatre. Managers do not fear to go to any length in mounting plays properly, and there is nothing in the outer world that defies reproduction in the mimic sphere. Steam is freely used; fire rages fiercely through folds of inflammable canvas; the lightnings flash; Hendrick Hudson and his men roll nine-pins in the Catskills, and the low rumble of the thunder, as the balls rattle down from crag to crag, is distinctly heard by the audience; poor, demented old _Lear_ cries to the winds to crack and blow their cheeks, and they do so to his full satisfaction; there is genuine rain in the shipwreck scene of "The Hearts of Oak;" a plentiful fall of the beautiful snow for "The Two Orphans;" a perfect reproduction of a mountain rivulet for "The Danites;" steamboat and railroad explosions of a realistic character in everything; an almost horizonless sea for the great raft scene in "The World;" and gorgeous coloring, rich furniture, choice bric-a-brac, rare paintings and the Lord only knows what, for the thousand and one melodramatic and society plays that are now flooding the stage. Then there are gems apparently rich enough to have come from the treasuries of Khedive or Sultan, and robes so redolent of royalty in color and material that the female portion of the audience is almost driven to distraction in admiring and coveting them. Little does the average lady patron of the theatre imagine that the finery she covets is often the product of the artiste's own needle, and that the gaiety and glory of an actress's career--with hundreds of admirers pouring diamonds into her lap, and hundreds of others feasting upon her charms, while many hang with reverence upon the words that fall from her lips--is but the merest of dreams; and that the sister whose professional successes cause her to look upon the stage as a place of pleasure only, may live in a tenement surrounded by a poor family to whose support her life-efforts are devoted; that she has few admirers; that she is pure as the fairest and purest woman in private life, and that her only sacrifice is made to the art which she loves and to which she has consecrated herself.