An awful and terrifying proof of the futility of human effort, that there is neither bad work nor good work to do, nothing but to await the coming of the Nirvana.

I have written much against the circulating library, and I have read a feeble defence or two; but I have not seen the argument that might be legitimately put forward in its favour.  It seems to me this:  the circulating library is conservatism, art is always conservative; the circulating library lifts the writer out of the precariousness and noise of the wild street of popular fancy into a quiet place where passion is more restrained and there is more reflection.  The young and unknown writer is placed at once in a place of comparative security, and he is not forced to employ vile and degrading methods of attracting attention; the known writer, having a certain market for his work, is enabled to think more of it and less of the immediate acclamation of the crowd; but all these possible advantages are destroyed and rendered nil by the veracious censorship exercised by the librarian.

* * * * *

There is one thing in England that is free, that is spontaneous, that reminds me of the blitheness and nationalness of the Continent;—­but there is nothing French about it, it is wholly and essentially English, and in its communal enjoyment and its spontaneity it is a survival of Elizabethan England—­I mean the music-hall; the French music-hall seems to me silly, effete, sophisticated, and lacking, not in the popularity, but in the vulgarity of an English hall—­I will not say the Pavilion, which is too cosmopolitan, dreary French comics are heard there—­for preference let us say the Royal.  I shall not easily forget my first evening there, when I saw for the time a living house—­the dissolute paragraphists, the elegant mashers (mark the imaginativeness of the slang), the stolid, good-humoured costers, the cheerful lights o’ love, the extraordinary comics.  What delightful unison of enjoyment, what unanimity of soul, what communality of wit; all knew each other, all enjoyed each other’s presence; in a word, there was life.  Then there were no cascades of real water, nor London docks, nor offensively rich furniture, with hotel lifts down which some one will certainly be thrown, but one scene representing a street; a man comes on—­not, mind you, in a real smock-frock, but in something that suggests one—­and sings of how he came up to London, and was “cleaned out” by thieves.  Simple, you will say; yes, but better than a fricassee of Faust, garnished with hags, imps, and blue flame; better, far better than a drawing-room set at the St. James’s, with an exhibition of passion by Mrs. and Mr. Kendal; better, a million times better than the cheap popularity of Wilson Barrett—­an elderly man posturing in a low-necked dress to some poor slut in the gallery; nor is there in the hall any affectation of language, nor that worn-out rhetoric