"Should not we, too, go as strictly and as ingeniously to work, seeing we practise an art far more delicate than that of music,--seeing we are called on to express the commonest and the strangest emotions of human nature, with elegance, and so as to delight? Can any thing be more shocking than to slur over our rehearsal, and in our acting to depend on good luck, or the capricious choice of the moment? We ought to place our highest happiness and satisfaction in mutually desiring to gain each other's approbation: we should even value the applauses of the public only in so far as we have previously sanctioned them among ourselves. Why is the master of the band more secure about his music than the manager about his play? Because, in the orchestra, each individual would feel ashamed of his mistakes, which offend the outward ear; but how seldom have I found an actor disposed to acknowledge or feel ashamed of mistakes, pardonable or the contrary, by which the inward ear is so outrageously offended! I could wish, for my part, that our theatre were as narrow as the wire of a rope-dancer, that so no inept fellow might dare to venture on it, instead of being, as it is, a place where every one discovers in himself capacity enough to flourish and parade." The company gave this apostrophe a kind reception; each being convinced that the censure conveyed in it could not apply to him, after acting a little while ago so excellently with the rest. On the other hand, it was agreed, that during this journey, and for the future if they remained together, they would regularly proceed with their training in the manner just adopted. Only it was thought, that, as this was a thing of good humor and free will, no formal manager must be allowed to have a hand in it. Taking it for an established fact, that, among good men, the republican form of government is the best, they declared that the post of manager should go round among them: he must be chosen by universal suffrage, and every time have a sort of little senate joined in authority along with him. So delighted did they feel with this idea, that they longed to put it instantly in practice. "I have no objection," said Melina, "if you incline making such an experiment while we are travelling: I shall willingly suspend my own directorship until we reach some settled place." He was in hopes of saving cash by this arrangement, and of casting many small expenses on the shoulders of the little senate or of the interim manager. This fixed, they went very earnestly to counsel how the form of the new commonwealth might best be adjusted. "'Tis an itinerating kingdom," said Laertes: "we shall at least have no quarrels about frontiers."