Then came long weeks of drill.  In the passage,

  “O my lord,
  When you went onward to this ended action,
  I looked upon her with a soldier’s eye,” etc.,

Claudio caught the fervour and softness at last, and seemed (it would have pleased Queen Bess better than Madame de Main tenon) like Palamon, in love indeed.  Ursula and Hero rose easily to the delicate poetry of the passages that begin,

  “The pleasantest angling is to see the fish
  Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,”

and

  “Look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs.”

Pedro got to perfection his turn and gesture in

  “The wolves have preyed; and look, the gentle day,
  Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about
  Dapples the drowsy east with spots of gray.”

With the rough comedy of Dogberry and the watchmen, that foils so well the sad tragedy of poor Hero’s heart-breaking, and contrasts in its blunders with the diamond-cut-diamond dialogue of Benedick and Beatrice, there was less difficulty.  From first to last, it was engrossing labour, as hard for the trainer as the trained, yet still delightful work; for what is a conscientious manager, but an artist striving to perfect a beautiful dramatic picture?  The different personages are the pieces for his mosaic, who, in emphasis, tone, gesture, by-play, must be carved and filed until there are no flaws in the joining, and the shading is perfect.  But all was ready at last, from the roar of Dogberry at the speech of Conrade,

  “Away! you’re an ass! you’re an ass!”

to the scarcely articulate agony of Hero when she sinks to the earth at her lover’s sudden accusation,

  “O Heavens! how am I beset! 
  What kind of catechising call you this?”

I fancy you ask, rather sneeringly, as to our scenery and stage adjuncts.  Once, in the great court theatre at Munich, I saw Wagner’s Rheingold. The king was present, and all was done for splendour that could be done in that centre of art.  When the curtain rose, the whole great river Rhine seemed to be flowing before you across the stage, into the side of whose flood you looked as one looks through the glass side of an aquarium.  At the bottom were rocks in picturesque piles; and, looking up through the tide to the top, as a diver might, the spectator saw the surface of the river, with the current rippling forward upon it, and the sunlight just touching the waves.  Through the flood swam the daughters of the Rhine, sweeping fair arms backward as they floated, their drapery trailing heavy behind them, darting straight as arrows, or winding sinuously, from bottom to top, from side to side, singing wildly as the Lorelei.  The scene changed, and it was the depths of the earth, red-glowing and full of gnomes.  And a third time, after a change, you saw from mountain-tops the city which the giants had built in the heavens for the gods,—­a glittering dome or pinnacle now