Mrs. Craik’s article on the condition of the English stage will, I feel sure, be read with great interest by all who are watching the development of dramatic art in this country.  It was the last thing written by the author of John Halifax, Gentleman, and reached me only a few days before her lamented death.  That the state of things is such as Mrs. Craik describes, few will be inclined to deny; though, for my own part, I must acknowledge that I see more vulgarity than vice in the tendencies of the modern stage; nor do I think it possible to elevate dramatic art by limiting its subject-matter.  On tue une litterature quand on lui interdit la verite humaine.  As far as the serious presentation of life is concerned, what we require is more imaginative treatment, greater freedom from theatric language and theatric convention.  It may be questioned, also, whether the consistent reward of virtue and punishment of wickedness be really the healthiest ideal for an art that claims to mirror nature.  However, it is impossible not to recognise the fine feeling that actuates every line of Mrs. Craik’s article; and though one may venture to disagree with the proposed method, one cannot but sympathise with the purity and delicacy of the thought, and the high nobility of the aim.

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The French Minister of Education, M. Spuller, has paid Racine a very graceful and appropriate compliment, in naming after him the second college that has been opened in Paris for the higher education of girls.  Racine was one of the privileged few who was allowed to read the celebrated Traite de l’Education des Filles before it appeared in print; he was charged, along with Boileau, with the task of revising the text of the constitution and rules of Madame de Maintenon’s great college; it was for the Demoiselles de St. Cyr that he composed Athalie; and he devoted a great deal of his time to the education of his own children.  The Lycee Racine will, no doubt, become as important an institution as the Lycee Fenelon, and the speech delivered by M. Spuller on the occasion of its opening was full of the happiest augury for the future.  M. Spuller dwelt at great length on the value of Goethe’s aphorism, that the test of a good wife is her capacity to take her husband’s place and to become a father to his children, and mentioned that the thing that struck him most in America was the wonderful Brooklyn Bridge, a superb titanic structure, which was completed under the direction of the engineer’s wife, the engineer himself having died while the building of the bridge was in progress.  ‘Il me semble,’ said M. Spuller, ’que la femme de l’ingenieur du pont de Brooklyn a realise la pensee de Goethe, et que non seulement elle est devenue un pere pour ses enfants, mais un autre pere pour l’oeuvre admirable, vraiment unique, qui a immortalise le nom qu’elle portait avec son mari.’  M. Spuller also laid great stress on the necessity of a thoroughly practical education,