Mark Twain did not visit London until seven years later, and Punch greeted the "distinguished humorist" in the quatrain headed "Welcome to a Lecturer":—

The greeting was renewed a couple of months later, and Punch's admiration, thus early expressed, never wavered in all the years that elapsed before Mark Twain was entertained by Punch at his table on the occasion of his last visit to England in 1907, when he came over to receive the degree of Doctor of Literature from the University of Oxford.

The relations of W. S. Gilbert with Punch were made public property to a certain extent by Gilbert's statement, in the preface to the collected edition of the Bab Ballads, that the Cruise of the Nancy Bell had been "offered to the Editor and declined by him on the ground that it was too cannibalistic to suit the taste of his readers." The Bab Ballads (so called from the signature "Bab" which Gilbert appended to his illustrations) appeared in Fun, which was founded in 1861, and were, while they lasted, the chief attraction of that paper. Gilbert was undoubtedly nettled by Mark Lemon's decision; had it been otherwise, he might very probably have become a regular contributor to Punch. But it is not strictly correct to say, as the author of the notice of Gilbert in the Encyclopædia Britannica does, that Gilbert continued to contribute to Fun because he had failed to gain the entrée into the pages of Punch. As a matter of fact he had frequently contributed, both with pen and pencil, to Punch in the early 'sixties. In 1865 his contributions included an amusing illustrated squib on the hydrophobia scare, the lines to "An Absent Husband," and a long prose piece "A wonderful Shilling's worth!" on the performances at the Polytechnic. The last named was Gilbert's final contribution to Punch.

The Nancy Bell was offered and rejected early in 1866, and appeared in Fun of March 3 without illustrations. The nonsense verses, "Sing for the Garish Eye," which appeared in Punch on April 16, 1873, were from Gilbert's pen, but the explanation given a fortnight later showed that they had been printed inadvertently; a "valued contributor" having forwarded them for Punch's private diversion and not for publication. They had actually been printed elsewhere ten years earlier. The amende was handsomely made, but Gilbert never contributed again to Punch. One cannot help regretting that he began the Bab Ballads with just the only one to which exception could have been taken, for it is cannibalistic!

Holding that a Free Press was an advantage to a nation, Punch had supported the Memorial to Leigh Hunt, who had been sent to prison "for publishing opinions which Mr. Punch in perfect safety may now put forth when he pleases, and the fact that Punch can just say what he likes without a fear of Newgate is owing in great measure to the battles Leigh Hunt fought," for which Punch was content to overlook Leigh Hunt's self-indulgent improvidence—so cruelly satirized by Dickens in Harold Skimpole. But when Charles Knight died in 1873 there was no need for reservation in the homage paid to that life-long and stalwart fighter for the repeal of the taxes on learning:—

DRAMA, OPERA, MUSIC AND THE FINE ARTS

Before the middle 'fifties critics of the Stage in England—apart from the extreme Puritans—had three main grounds for complaint: the monopoly of the patent theatres, the patronage of foreigners by the Court and fashionable Society, and the popularity of degrading sensational plays; and up to 1857 the pages of Punch were eloquent on all three counts. In the period covered by this volume not only was royal patronage more judiciously and impartially bestowed, but the abolition of the exclusive privileges of the patent theatres had cut at the root of the evil and rendered possible such enlightened ventures as those of Phelps and Mrs. Warner at Sadler's Wells. The immediate result of the Free Trade policy in plays was to stimulate the legitimate drama, and in particular the cult of Shakespeare. Phelps's work in this connexion comes in for repeated approval, especially for his good all-round casts. Shakespearean actors are prominent throughout. The announcement of the death of Scribe in 1861 inspires the comment that the Members of the Dramatic Authors' Association are as well as can be expected. Punch had no love for endless réchauffés of French plays, but he was no bigot where foreign actors of merit were concerned, and cordially welcomed Fechter as Hamlet in 1861, while deprecating the preliminary puffing of his manager. It was not needed, for while admitting that Fechter's accent was disconcerting, Punch had nothing but praise for his admirable play of feature, his graceful ease of attitude and gesture and his intelligent conception of the character. As for the interpretation as a whole, foreigners were entitled to read Shakespeare for themselves: Punch held no brief for the Protection of British Stage Traditions, but believed in free trade in intellect as well as in cotton.

At the foot of the notice there is a picture of a stout, shabby tragedian exclaiming "Fechter! Pah! Hamlet with light hair and no points. Pah! The drama's gone." This professional jealousy is again ridiculed in "The Groan of a True Briton" a month later. The "boom" in Shakespeare this winter was quite remarkable, with A Midsummer Night's Dream at Sadler's Wells, Booth in The Merchant of Venice and King Richard II, Brooke at Drury Lane, and Fechter at the Princess's. Othello's occupation (on the stage) was extremely popular. We read in the issue of November 9, under the heading "Great Fall of Blacks":—

Five Othellos are stabbing themselves regularly, just now, and there will soon be a sixth, Mr. Charles Kean having ordered the largest pot of blacking Messrs. Day and Martin supply, and having announced that he is cubbing dext.

The vendetta against Charles Kean, it will thus be seen, was so implacable that Punch could not resist the temptation of dragging him in without any provocation.

Another and a greater foreigner dominated the scene in 1863. Of Adelaide Ristori, "the greatest of living actresses" in his opinion, Punch confessed that her genius beggared description. When she appeared at Her Majesty's in the summer of 1863 he declared that "in no English or American dictionary could be found words of sufficient strength" to express his admiration of Adelaide Ristori, or "his compassion for the unhappy person who does not go and behold one or two of her performances. This is a debilitated under-statement of the case.... What a magnificent voice hers is, and how artistically managed. The vox humana is the first musical instrument in the world, but then so few can perform upon it. Our Adelaide is one of the few." Here, at least, Punch's estimate never varied, and was only heightened by further familiarity. When Ristori played Lady Macbeth in English ten years later, Punch owned to some misgivings as to her accent,[28] but on the second performance he only noticed it twice. Otherwise "there was not, from first to last, one single fault to be found with this remarkable performance."

Foreign actors and actresses were in the main treated handsomely and on their merits by Punch. Bandmann, the German-American actor, was highly commended in 1868 and advised to act Shakespeare. The visit of the audacious Schneider belongs to another phase of the drama, but the condemnation of French acting as a mere "swindle" put into the mouth of "Opie Wing," a "British Veteran—legitimate lead and blank verse heavies," is purely ironical. The methods of the Comédie Française troupe visiting London in 1871 are attacked precisely for the qualities which were their greatest distinction—their refusal to force the note or play to the gallery, their delicacy and self-effacement in the interests of ensemble, as when Delaunay came on in livery just to give a message. Punch's readiness to admit that fruitful suggestions for the improvement of the British Stage might come from the most unexpected foreign quarters receives a curious and even prophetic illustration in his remarks on "The Theatre for the People":—

Russia may well be described as a benighted country! But of all the queer notions ever bred of barbarism, commend us to one in the Pall Mall's latest "Notes from Russia." Conceive a Commission appointed to examine the question of the establishment of a "Theatre for the People"! And more; imagine the Commission reporting strongly that such a theatre should be constructed! A theatre with a moral object! A theatre meant "to divert the people from foolish, vulgar and gross amusements, by providing them with healthy and elevating spectacular entertainments at a cheap rate"! A theatre to contain seats for 2,350 people—say something between Drury Lane and the Lyceum—with 1,300 of the seats at prices varying from 2d. to 4d., and the others from 4d. to 3s. 2d.! This infatuated Committee further report that such a theatre might be made to bring in a profit of £5,000 a year—or ten per cent, on the capital employed. They recommend that the management should be entrusted to a competent private person, of experience, taste and refinement, and have prepared a repertory of 140 pieces in the Russian language, original and translated, calculated, they think, to forward their object of entertaining and elevating.

They further recommend that lotteries, masked balls, and the sale of spirituous liquors be forbidden in the "Theatre of the People."

Hear that, ye stunning sons of the music-halls—hear that, frequenters of our splendid saloons and brilliant bars! Contrast this barbaric dream of a Russian Blue Book, with the civilized reality of London, where Free Trade in theatres does its work, and the demand is allowed to create the supply of theatrical pabulum for the people, from the Victoria[29] to the penny gaff! The idea of the people being condemned to "healthy and elevating" entertainment; when their betters can revel in the Schneider, the Menken, the Cancan and the Opera Bouffe, the indecent burlesque, the breakdown, and the sensational drama!

The historic invasion of the Russians did not occur till about forty years later. Of the famous French players who delighted English audiences between 1857 and 1874 the last and not the least fascinating was Aimée Desclée, who, after an arduous apprenticeship to her art and ten years of weary waiting, had been discovered by Alexandre Dumas fils, and leapt into fame in La Femme de Claude, Diane de Lys, Princesse Georges, and, above all, as the original Frou-Frou in the play of that name. Of her it was well said by a French critic that "she had a strange, wandering, unbalanced look that revealed the troubled depths of her soul. Her voice had a most peculiar timbre, and her abrupt utterances, every word of which stung like the strokes of a whip, fell upon a spellbound audience that hung on every word." After fulfilling a brilliant engagement at the Princess's Theatre in 1873 she returned to Paris to die at the age of thirty-seven. The tragedy of her brief success and the exacting temper of the Parisian public are well summed up in Punch's memorial tribute:—

While extending salutations to the foreigners Punch was not slow to acclaim native talent. In 1865 he recognized in Kate Terry "one of the most consummate actresses of her own range of parts we have ever seen on the English Stage." That was said of her appearance in Henry Dunbar in December, 1865, and in June, 1867, in Reade's Dora, "a real English Idyll, sweet, simple, natural and breathing of the country," he found her completely satisfying in a part unlike her usual stage self. Three months later Punch bade her farewell on her marriage and withdrawal from the stage, paying homage to her triple endowment of Genius, Goodness and Beauty, her "innocent sensitive face," and her gentle, gracious and womanly presence. Her "delicate influence" was a standing disproof of the arguments of those who despaired of true art and its reign on the stage, and she was retiring "from the top of the ladder reached fairly at last with her laurels still springing and none of them blighted."

The rise of Irving from comedy and melodrama to Shakespearean drama is attentively and sympathetically followed. His performance in the "nightmare play" of The Bells is pronounced to be a triumph of merit; the sense of relief experienced on the fall of the curtain was in itself the highest praise. The programme at the Lyceum ended with Pickwick, with Irving as Jingle. Punch regarded it as an incongruity: he preferred to see Irving play The Bells without the Jingle. There was nothing wrong with Charles I but the play. "His make-up was admirable, his playing of the first and the last Act well-nigh faultless; but between these two Acts the actor was left to make the best bricks possible out of the scantiest wisps of straw.... I have no hesitation in saying that the last Act is as affecting a spectacle as anything I have ever seen on the stage." With Irving's Richelieu, in 1873, Punch was disappointed, though allowing him some pathetic moments. But Irving, it is suggested, may have been the victim of the bad traditions attaching to what was after all a pretentious and "wind-baggy" play. Irving's Hamlet was another matter altogether, and is treated very seriously and exhaustively by Punch. It was a "genuine and well-deserved success." No such strong and general sensation had been produced since Fechter, over whom Irving had the great advantage of speaking as a native the tongue in which Shakespeare wrote. No impersonation with which Punch was familiar, including that of Macready, displayed a more consistent conception, more sustained intention, more intelligent mastery of this many-sided character. This much granted, Punch severely criticized Irving's cavalier treatment of the text, his suppressions and omissions, his handling of all the scenes with the Ghost. The psychological interpretation of Hamlet's madness erred through over-emphasis on his pathetic and gentle side. The unsound strain was kept too much in the background, and consistency was attained at the expense of the text. Sundry scenic innovations are also condemned, and altogether high praise is tempered with a good deal of acute and legitimate criticism. On the vexed question of Hamlet's madness Punch writes intelligently, but without the wit which inspired the immortal couplet in Gilbert's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern:—

There are some good lines, however, in the issue of December 12, 1874, on "Hamlet's Right Hair," whether flaxen or raven. After all, as Punch argues, it is not a question of the thatch of Hamlet's upper storey:

Turning from serious drama to melodrama and comedy high and otherwise, we find a liberal acknowledgment of the excitement furnished by the Colleen Bawn, Boucicault's bedevilled version of Gerald Griffin's fine novel The Collegians, when it was produced towards the close of 1860. The plot is fully set forth, and "Jack Easel" confesses that he enjoyed the evening very much. "Whatever may be the opinion of the learned regarding Mr. Boucicault as a dramatist, there can be little doubt of his merits 'on the boards.' I can hardly imagine a better stage Irishman." But Punch, who had no mercy for Boucicault's resentment of criticism, in March, 1862, printed a mock notice signed "Dion Boucicault," threatening condign punishment on all who disparaged his genius or dared to leave the theatre before the curtain fell and D.B. appeared before the same. And a month later we read a mock trial of an unfortunate pittite who had ventured to make some unfavourable comments on the Cave scene. The production of the melodrama founded on Charles Reade's Never Too Late to Mend, in 1865, met with Punch's approval. Some of the audience hissed the prison scenes: yet Menken had been tolerated. This was the famous and notorious Adah Isaacs Menken, a native of

Louisiana; dancer, actress, school teacher, journalist and poetess, married first of all to a Jew, whose faith she adopted, and then to the "Benicia Boy," Heenan, the prize-fighter. After a chequered career on and off the stage in America she appeared at Astley's in Mazeppa in 1864, when Punch made reference to her as "a bare-backed jade on bare-backed steed." It was certainly a succès de scandale, but "the Menken" made a stir in the literary world and found patrons and friends in Charles Reade, Charles Dickens (to whom her volume of poems, Infelicia, was dedicated), and Swinburne. In Paris, to which city she migrated, and where she died in 1869, she enjoyed the friendship of Dumas and Théophile Gautier. "The Menken" was not intended for a placid domestic life; she would not have been in her element at a Mothers' Meeting; but she was a highly educated woman, had studied Latin and Greek, had played Lady Macbeth, and, though not a Sappho, was a much better poetess than Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Another actress of the "hectic" type, about whom Punch as an informal censor morum was much exercised, was the famous Mlle. Schneider, who incarnated the canaillerie of Offenbach, and was the idol of Paris in the years in which the Second Empire was dancing to its doom. She appeared in La Grande Duchesse and La Belle Hélène in London in the season of 1868, drew the town at the St. James's Theatre, but met with little encouragement from the Press. Punch declares that Schneider was far more vulgar in London than in Paris, though on her native heath her performance was witnessed chiefly by ladies of the faster set; and draws the moral that they manage these things better in France. He found her "perhaps scarcely so extravagant in her vulgarity" in La Belle Hélène, but "there is all that excessive grimacing, continual adoption of the 'cad'-tone (which her admirers think so charmingly clever), that pointless introduction of rough horse-play, hitting and kicking, without which Schneider would not be Schneider." So Punch notes, as a "natural consequence" of the indulgence allowed by the Lord Chamberlain to Schneider to "kick up behind and before," like "Ole Joe," on every occasion, the production of the notorious and (for the time) audacious play of Formosa a year later. Formosa was a play of fast life, with scenes at Cookham (hence the name); a strange amalgam of impropriety and sentimentality; and Punch dealt faithfully with the ridiculous situation in which the heroine, discovered by her parents in the most compromising company, "makes a sudden and miraculous leap from the lowest vice to the height of most sublime virtue."

Schneider and Formosa were, however, excrescences on the history of the British stage. A really characteristic Victorian product was the series of "drawing-room comedies" by T. W. Robertson, associated with the Prince of Wales's Theatre in the Tottenham Court Road, and the management of the Bancrofts. Punch thought Play faulty in construction and tricky in its effects, but had nothing but praise for the acting of Marie Wilton, Lydia Foote, Montague, Bancroft and John Hare. With him the Play was not the thing, but the players; still Robertson's later comedies, for all their artificiality, gave an immense amount of harmless pleasure to Victorian audiences. Elderly playgoers will always retain the pleasantest memories of School and Caste; they were a most amusing "sentimentalization" of a phase of society which has passed away, and fitted the company to perfection. The little playhouse in the Tottenham Court Road did excellent work in other ways, as Punch acknowledged in his dream dialogue with Sheridan, when The School for Scandal was revived in 1874 with Bancroft as Joseph Surface, Coghlan as Charles, Hare "a perfect picture" as Sir Peter, and Mrs. Bancroft admirable in "the rural coquette who had adopted all the graces and manners of a woman of fashion." Another notable Sheridan revival was that of The Rivals at the Haymarket in November, 1870, though Punch notes the disconcerting effect of Buckstone's personality: people roared with laughter at him before he spoke, or if he merely winked.

The satiric drama was dormant until 1873, when The Happy Land was produced at the Court Theatre by Miss Marie Litton on March 17. It was founded on Gilbert's Wicked World, "a fairy comedy," written for Buckstone and the Kendals, and produced at the Haymarket with only moderate success on January 4. The Happy Land was designed by Gilbert himself, but the stage version was mainly worked out by Gilbert Arthur à Beckett. Gilbert's name did not appear on the bill, on which the piece was assigned to F. L. Tomline (i.e., Gilbert) and à Beckett. The Happy Land was a satire on the Gladstonian administration, and three of the principal actors were made up to caricature Gladstone, Lowe and Ayrton—so closely that after a few days the Lord Chamberlain intervened and the make-up was considerably modified. Punch saw the piece before the Lord Chamberlain's order had been issued, and "crabbed" it heavily. Unlike most of those who saw the play, he found little wit in it. There were three or four "palpable hits" in the opening scene, but ten minutes of it were enough: the satire was of the sledge-hammer order, and the slain were hewn over and over again to weariness. "For a short time the First Act was lively; the Second was a faint shadow of the First." Punch's disparagement is rather odd, in view of à Beckett's connexion with the paper: it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the estrangement from Gilbert, referred to elsewhere, may have coloured his judgment.

The year 1873 was marked by the passing of Macready, who died on April 27. His services to Art, his high aims and neglect of fashion are recognized in the memorial verses, from which we borrow the last stanza:—

The sentiment is not easily to be reconciled with the generally hopeful view of the theatre expounded by Punch, or his comparison of Irving with Macready a few months later. In this personal context it is interesting to find that Punch's misgivings were at least partially removed by the emergence of a new star of the first magnitude. He had already welcomed Ellen Terry as Puck in the revival of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Queen's Theatre; he now paid an unreserved tribute to her performance in The Wandering Heir at the same theatre in March, 1874:—

Considering the present position of our Theatre, such qualities as spontaneity, grace, the finest truth of accent and emphasis, tenderness in grave passages, mirthfulness in gay ones, and all these fused in an atmosphere of buoyancy and brightness which exhilarates like champagne, and irradiates like light, are something to be indeed thankful for, when found combined in one Actress on an English Stage. They are to be seen combined at this moment in Miss Ellen Terry's impersonation of Philippa, in Mr. Charles Reade's drama of The Wandering Heir, at the Queen's Theatre. Let those who may doubt if such praise nowadays can have a solid foundation, go and admire for themselves. A new power of graceful comedy and womanly sentiment comes to us with the return to the boards of this young and charming Actress, whose eclipse for the last few years has been hard indeed upon a Stage that had no light to spare.

In the earlier years of this period Punch was much concerned with the craze for sensation, and the stage-realism which leaves nothing to the imagination, but exalts the practical carpenter at the expense of the dramatic genius. This stock complaint reaches a climax at the close of 1865 in connexion with the announcement in a fashionable paper that in a play to be shortly produced in Paris there would be "a grand park with a real waterfall" and "a real river flowing through the stage." Punch's comments, if not very subtle, are at least a sane contribution to the everlasting conflict over stage illusion waged between "enterprise" and idealism.

Over-reliance on scenery and machinery was, however, a venial offence compared with the exploits of management recorded in the following year:—

With exquisite good taste a highly enterprising Manager engaged "a few of the survivors" who were rescued from the wreck of the London, and has been paying them to appear every evening at his theatre, as a prelude to the gambols of Pantaloon and Clown. With a similar high notion of the duties of men catering to entertain the public, another enterprising Manager has hired "kind old Daddy," late of Lambeth Workhouse, to exhibit himself nightly in a new sensation drama, called The Casual Ward. "Sweet are the uses of adversity," when it is utilized in this way for dramatic exhibition; and flourishing indeed is the condition of the drama, when such magnets are deemed requisite to make a play attractive, and to draw a decent house.

If the horrors of the casual ward be thought a fitting subject for dramatic exhibition, perhaps we soon may see a drama called The Union Infirmary, with a score of real paupers all lying really ill. Or a sensation scene of surgery perhaps might prove attractive, and a real leg or arm be amputated nightly, before a crowded house.... Playgoers will thus become familiarized with horrors, which they read of with dismay; and to some minds a calamity may fail to cause regret on the ground of its affording a good subject for the stage.

These particular anticipations have, fortunately, not all been fulfilled, though persons who have been tried (and acquitted) on a murder charge have appeared on the boards of recent years, and the deliberate cult of horrors has become the avowed aim of the disciples of the Grand Guignol school at the Little Theatre. The imaginary forecast in 1858 of the possibilities of playbills as a means of advertisement has long been transcended in fact. More interesting than these speculations is the prophecy which grew out of the complaint against long runs in the middle 'sixties. Punch predicts in the summer of 1864 that if the repertory system is kept up in the provinces Londoners will go to Brighton every night for their play or their opera. The actual fact is that the revival of repertory theatres in the provinces has rendered country cousins less dependent on their periodical visits to London in order to keep abreast with the latest dramatic developments. The mention of Brighton recalls a curious episode illustrative of the social code of mid-Victorian times. In the autumn of 1858 Punch rebukes the headmaster of a Brighton school who sent away the son of a distinguished actor lest it should damage his connexion! Today such a pupil is probably an asset rather than a handicap. The attitude of the Church to the Stage was hardly benevolent in the 'sixties: this may account for the satisfaction displayed by Punch over the "exceptionally sensible" sermon preached in 1873 at St. James's, Piccadilly, by Lightfoot, then Canon of St. Paul's, and afterwards Bishop of Durham. Dr. Lightfoot maintained that the stage, well conducted, would be an auxiliary of the pulpit; that it was an enormous and powerful instrument in the hands of Society for good or evil; and, while holding that the present state of the drama was far from satisfactory, he paid all honour to those dramatists and managers who were attempting to raise it by not pandering to the vitiated tastes of some of the public. In all of which sentiments he was vigorously applauded by Punch, who could not, however, resist the temptation of making verbal capital out of the preacher's name.

The competition of music-halls with theatres had already begun, and Punch had little or no conception of the length to which it was ultimately destined to be carried. He had no love of the music-hall as then organized, and nothing but contempt for the style of song which flourished in the temples of variety. So when the Bill, promoted in 1865 by Mr. Locke, M.P. for Southwark, for legalizing theatrical performances in music-halls was supported by a "dramatic authors' petition," he fell foul of the petitioners especially in regard to their initial contention:—

"The Lower Middle Class and Working Class have, of late years, developed a large appetite for intellectual amusement, which the number of theatres, and the present construction of theatres (which give no comfortable or proper accommodation for these classes) have failed to satisfy."

Perhaps we may admit that the theatre, as generally conducted nowadays, is not exactly the place in which to satisfy an "intellectual appetite." With our "intellectual appetite," still suffering under the mockery of a Barmecide entertainment, in the shape of a recent course of burlesques, we feel that the intellectual playgoer, like the sheep in Milton's Sonnet, "looks up and is not fed" in our London theatres. But is there not something besides "numbers" and "construction " of theatre to blame here? May not the quality of the theatrical fare provided have a leetle to do with it? And who are the purveyors of that fare but many of the gentlemen who sign this petition.

If they fail so miserably in satisfying the "intellectual appetite" of even "the Lower Middle and Working-Class" in our theatres, how are they to satisfy it better in the music-halls which they wish to open for the unlimited consumption of their viands?

If they have anything better to offer, why not try it in the theatres, where they will, at least, find the cooks—such as they are—in the shape of actors, and the best procurable garnish of scenery, dresses, and decorations, without the distractions of chops and steaks, sherry cobblers, cold withouts, and sodas-and-brandies?

... But the less the demand for the opening of the music-halls to theatrical representations is based on the demands of the "intellectual appetite" of the Lower Middle and Working Classes, the better.

Three years later Punch was unable to notice any great improvement in the variety stage:—

The music-hall gentry had a great gathering the other day, for a purpose which we should approve, if we did not hold that the music-hall, as at present conducted, is so pestilent a nuisance that charity can have nothing to say to it. One of the performers had grace or shame enough to deliver some doggerel in which he deprecated the wrath of Punch on the ground that everybody must live. It is the plea usually heard in the dock, and the answer is: "Yes, but decently." But as it is of no use telling the music-hall folks what gentlemen think of them, perhaps they would like to know what the respectable artisan thinks of them, and of the spirit in which it is not impossible that he may deal with them. Here are the words of the organ of hundreds of thousands of the skilled artisans and the Trades Unions, in fact, and we recommend them to special attention:—

"To these glaring temples of dissipation our youth are nightly attracted; where they are being gradually trained to drinking habits; where their minds are debased by the low songs and vulgar exhibitions provided for them; and where their morals are undermined and corrupted by contact with loose associates, when their blood is fired and their brains bemuddled with drink.... The expenditure incurred in those places of amusement keeps young men poor; causes marriage to be greatly postponed—to the increase of vice; or, if entered into, without the necessary provision for making a comfortable home; while the habits they acquire by going there will too frequently cause them to neglect home and family for their nightly amusements."

So says the Beehive speaking the sentiments of the Working Man. We do not think that he will see much force in the mewing plea of "must live."

The music-halls of to-day do not call for such censure; they have even become fashionable; but one is tempted to wonder whether there is any modern counterpart in Labour journalism to the austerely Puritan Beehive.

In the world of opera the domination of the Italian School of composers and singers, though intermittently and not unsuccessfully assailed, remained practically unbroken throughout this period, 1857-1874. Still, the formation of the company for the performance of English operas by Louisa Pyne and William Harrison in 1856 is a landmark that must not be overlooked. The partnership was dissolved in 1862, but the performances given at the Lyceum, Drury Lane, and Covent Garden theatres in those years anticipated the good work done in later years by the Carl Rosa and other companies. The general musical situation in 1858 is not badly summarized in the lines published at the end of June under the heading "Musicians and Maniacs":—

Ella was the founder and director of the "Musical Union," which gave Chamber Music Concerts much on the lines of the famous "Pops"; Arabella was Arabella Goddard, the leading British pianist. Henry Leslie's choir for the performance of madrigal music carried off the prize against all comers at Paris in 1867. Wilhelmine Clauss was the Bohemian pianist, known in later years as Mme. Szarvady. To return to opera: it is amusing to find precisely the same charge hurled against Verdi as against Wagner twenty or thirty years later—that he cracked or wore out voices in their vain effort to contend against orchestral din. Grisi was still the chief diva, though a new star had arisen in Titiens, whose name spurred Punch to display his metrical prowess:—

The new Opera House had been opened at Covent Garden, and on the first night patrons complained of getting covered with white, as the paint was still fresh. The "Music of the Future" continues to excite Punch's derision, and at the close of 1858 he seizes the opportunity of running a tilt against Lohengrin:—

Meyerbeer's opera of the Africaine seems to be "The Opera of the Future," for there appears but little chance of its ever being played in our lifetime. How many years has it not been locked up in the great composer's portfolio, undergoing a species of African slavery, of which manager after manager has tried in vain to find the musical key. However, we are sorry to find Meyerbeer lending his great name to Messrs. Wagner, Liszt, and other crotchet-mongers of the Music of the Future, in support of their inharmonious fallacies, that have lately been aired in a grand pretentious production, called Lohengrin. A "grin" seems to be the end of all their Operas, though at best it is but a melancholy one, and anything but flattering to those who provoke it. The Viennese are all Lohengrinning like mad. We wish Meyerbeer would put this band of musical fanatics to shame by allowing his Africaine to become an "Opera of the Present," instead of "the Future," and so prove to these hare-brained gentlemen what good music really is. The best Music of the Future is that which has the elements of vitality in every note of it, so that there can be no doubt about its living several scores of years after its production. The specimen that we know of this class is Don Giovanni, and our would-be Mozarts cannot do better than take it as a model.

Punch's enthusiasm for Piccolomini had so far cooled that when a testimonial to her was suggested in 1860, he declined his support on the ground that she was "a pretty little personage, of good family, who, by force of bright eyes, intelligent acting, and a charming smile, pleased the public into a belief that she was a lyric artist." Moreover, if there was to be a testimonial, Grisi was the proper recipient. The following year was noteworthy for the advent of Patti, unheralded by any strident flourish of trumpets. Punch's first reference to her début in May was brief and ambiguous, and disfigured by a pun on her name. Six weeks later he remains still unshaken in his allegiance to his old heroines—Malibran, Jenny Lind, and Grisi—and suspends his judgment on the newcomer. Patti's arrival coincided with the "final farewell appearances" of Grisi, a mistress of the grand style as singer and actress, queen-like in her gestures and gait, unequalled even by Titiens (in Punch's opinion) in Norma and as Donna Anna; but Punch soon succumbed to the furore for Patti. As Zerlina she was "more charming than he expected," and a year later he celebrated his enslavement in jingling rhyme:—

Punch said what he could in 1861 of two forgotten operas—Balfe's Puritan's Daughter, with Santley in the cast, and Benedict's Lily of Killarney, a tertiary deposit from The Collegians—but found more congenial occupation in the spring of 1862 in levelling the shafts of ineffectual, because uninstructed, ridicule against Wagner:—

LE VERITABLE "OPERA COMIQUE"

We read that Herr Wagner is about to compose a comic opera, music and words. We agree with our facetious contemporary, The Musical World,[30] that we never heard an opera of Wagner's yet that was not more, or less, comic.... As this gentleman's music is said to belong to "The Future"—and certainly as a Present it is not worth having—we suppose he generally gets it executed by the celebrated Band of "Hope."

A KING WITH A STRANGE TASTE FOR MUSIC

Wagner and Gounod

Herr Wagner, the great composer, "for the future" (a.d. 1962), has received sharp orders from the King of Saxony to return home instantly. Is the King jealous that other parts of the Continent should have so much of the services of his Kapellmeister, and he comparatively so little? He probably wishes to have Wagner all to himself. Far from quarrelling with the desired monopoly, in the cause of music we heartily rejoice at it. The royal edict will have the effect of narrowing the evil of contaminating compositions. It is tantamount to a musical quarantine. Travellers must not venture too near, or else they may be infected with one of his malignant airs, which are not so catching, perhaps, as they are lowering, leaving a fearful sense of depression behind them. Henceforth, the flights of The Flying Dutchman will be restricted to one kingdom instead of half a dozen. We hope Wagner will be confined to Dresden all his life. Our Philharmonic will gain from his imprisonment. It will run no further risk of being nearly knocked on the head from another blow of his erratic baton.

The chief operatic attractions of 1863 are set forth in an excellent mock-Virgilian Eclogue in which the two rival impresarios, Gye and Mapleson, figure as Damoetas and Menalcas and Punch as Palaemon. Patti's popularity is attested in the couplet:—