But one definition is possible. The music-hall offers variety—it matters not whether it be good or bad-the theatre, monotony; variety the people prefer, and always have preferred. No other reason is needed to account for the permanent success of London's one hundred and eighty-nine halls, the varying fortunes of its forty-three theatres.

If the music-hall be a modern institution, the entertainment it provides is the heirloom of centuries. There is not a turn " which is new; the one novelty is their arrangement on the same programme, the consecration to them of a special stage. What is the "Sketch," but the Morality revived? It is much shorter, to be sure, but had there been kind authorities to limit the moral play to forty, or better still to twenty minutes, its days had been longer in the land. Not its matter, but its tediousness killed it. The genuine Englishman loves a good, honest moral, especially, if it be as easy to read as a sky sign, as seasoned with sentiment as his daily paper. He objects to the "fine shades"; were anything left to his imagination, he would be forced to that mental effort which it is the duty of the music-hall to prevent. The Morality has improved in the shortening, it is the better for dropping allegory: the moral has become more obvious. In the old form, there was much beating about the bush ; in the new, thanks to the exigencies of the music-hall licence, there can be no shilly-shallying. Skelton, to prove the vanity of riches, introduced into his "Magnyficence," twenty characters, endless soliloquies, and constant by-play. In the last "Sketch" it was my privilege to see in the Canterbury over the water, the dramatis persona were but six: the blunt, faithful 'orny 'anded working-man in flannel shirt; the gentlemanly villain in linen (according to musichall conventions, a starched collar symbolises villainy); the modest village maiden; the stage capitalist, irascible but benevolent (his overcoat, worn in midsummer, denoting wealth); an angel child, of course a girl in boy's clothes; and a policeman. Where the gain had they been labelled Honesty, Vice, Modesty, Benevolence, Innocence, and Retribution?. No one could mistake their functions; the situations and final triumph of Innocence and Honesty were as inevitable as the catastrophe of Greek tragedy. When Scene 1 disclosed a glade in a wood, and the working-man with a shriek of "Un'and 'er villian!" rescued the maiden the sequel was a foregone conclusion. Of course, the capitalist had been robbed,

and now strolled into the wood to explain to the villain his plot to catch the thief. Of course, the villain was the thief, and at once, in his turn, explained to the audience his plot to betray his rival : "Oi'll put the two bob wot's marked in Jack's pawcket! Oi'll win me Beauty yit! Ha! ha!" Of course, the angel-child was hiding behind a tree, and once the coast clear, sprang forward to express her joy in an elaborate breakdown that left her breath only to shriek, "There's toime yit Jack to sive!"

The rhymed talk of Magnyficence with Fancy and CounterfeitCountenance and Folly and the rest was feeble in comparison with this simple scene. Nor could the encounter with Adversity and Poverty exceed in force and terseness the second scene in the capitalist's office, with the angel-child pretending to hide under a desk, but really the first object to strike any but a villain's eye. Straight to the point, without long-winded soliloquy, went the villain, slipping the marked money into the pocket of Jack's coat, hung on a convenient peg! And straighter still went the angel-child, taking it out again, in the midst of a brilliant series of hornpipes, highland flings, and Irish jigs, thus appealing to the predominant nationalities of the cosmopolitan metropolis. For, short as is the present Morality, it too must have its interlude of dance and song. In Skelton's play, it took Redress, Circumspection, Perseverance, and Magnyficence, all talking hard, to read the lesson at the end. At the Canterbury, it was enough to show the villain, his collar unbuttoned, his necktie undone, handcuffed by the policeman on one side of the stage, the maiden in Jack's arms on the other, and the angel-child executing a thrilling pas seul in the centre. Had Vice been carried off on the Devil's shoulders in the manner of the early clumsy device, could the moral have been strengthened?

But the old-fashioned "Sketch" I fear is doomed. Music-hall proprietors boast of its refining influence, and are elaborating it into melodrama. Theatre managers dread its interference with their rights, and oppose it with a triple bill. Brand-new halls for the West-end do away with it to make room for one-act plays by literary men. The "Sketch" came from the people and was, at least, racily characteristic of them. The new short drama offers not even art as compensation. And even Kegan and Elvin, the two masters, the two artists, ruined by popularity, are descending to cheap sentiment.

If the "Sketch" be but the revival of the Morality, the ballet is but a new version of the old court pageant. In the Fairfax and Harleian MSS. are descriptions of Disguisars which, put into nineteenth century English, might pass for Silhouette's last notice of the last Alhambra ballet; that is, descriptions of the combination of dance and spectacle, of inconsequent plot and bewildering panorama, of which Leicester-square, and not St. James's, is now the holy of holies. It may be questioned whether even the skirt-dance, the serpentinedance, or the electric-dance is strictly modern; or, if it be, to the early Nellies and Letties and Lotties it would seem but a weak substitute for their own weirder dances, when they pirouetted on their hands, balanced themselves on swords, long skirts clinging to their waving legs and winding about their graceful feet, as they can be seen in medieval illustrations.

It is the critic's joy to extol the past at the expense of the present. "Where," he asks, "where are the minstrels ?-where the ballads of

yester-year?"

But the critic does not go to the music-hall. In its songs and singers it is most faithful to tradition. Had statistics been preserved, doubtless it could be demonstrated that the minstrel's turns outnumbered those of his brother artistes in Middle-Age halls; on the modern variety stage, the proportion is as six to one; greater in the Pavilion, or Tivoli, or Royal, where sketch or ballet is not presented. The people love music-or noise; their vigorous chorus is not to be misunderstood. And the popular songs, that correspond to the ballads of Sir Isumbras or Sir Eglamour, are produced first on the variety bill. Language may alter with the ages, but human passion is ever the same. In the nineteenth century, as in the thirteenth, men delight in songs of patriotism and of love. Loud and long resound the cheers of music-hall patriots, when the young lady, in red tights and velvet cloak, shouts the glory of “The English Rose"; many a furtive tear drops into a B.-and-S. when Mr. Charles Godfrey, in a white wig, sings the woes of the old soldier, once England's brave defender. To the average man, would the betrayed maiden's

"Waly, waly, love be bonny"

seem more plaintive than Miss Ada Lundberg's lament for her soldierlover:

"Fur me little Tommy Hatkins wus a fly young man,

And 'e's bin the ruingiation of 'is Mari Hann !"

Or was Jane Shore more to be pitied by the populace than the slavey deserted by her faithless policeman :

The shepherd of the ballad was not more steadfast than the coster singing to his 'Arriet, or the labourer to his dear old Dutch; the nutbrown maid not more faithful than Miss Bessie Bellwood to her Aubrey Plantagenet. Some day, music-hall poetry will find its Bishop Percy. There may be fewer ballads of knights, but the knight now is "resting": to be as realistic as the medieval minstrel when he chanted of Arthur and of Roland, Mr. Dan Leno sings of shop-walkers and waiters, Mr. Herbert Campbell of navvies, Mr. Walter Munroe of the "Skiters at Olympia," Mr. Coborn of "The Man who broke the Bank at Monte Carlo "—the heroes of our civilisation. Even the dodges of the old men are tried anew and for Moros in the Morality, "counterfeiting a vaine gesture and a foolish counte

soared to the pathos of dress-coat and blackened tears, of poor Molly who

nance, singing the foote of many songs as fooles were wont," the modern variety manager gives us the Sisters Govetti with their inimitable "Up to Date," that jumble of music-hall songs which no self-respecting hurdy-gurdy or brass band in London would dare omit from its repertory. In only two respects was the earlier minstrelsie inferior to ours. It had not the nigger, the portly gentleman in face who warbles, in a voice filled with wanted for a shilling to pawn her dear Dolly, and save her starving family, Nor had it risen to the conception of the serio-comic, the young lady in flaxen curls, sun-bonnet and baby's apron, or else in cropped locks, silk hat, coat and trousers, who summons you with a Hi! hi!" to "clear the wy for the Rowdy-Dowdy Boys!" These are the two supreme touches reserved for modern genius. The artistic quality, or even the average excellence of this bunch of songs, it is true, could not easily be maintained. But who imagines that every old ballad brought out was good? Who knows the number of inanities lost for the few masterpieces saved? Many of the music-hall productions are rubbish, but not all. Has not Mr. Rudyard Kipling's "Tommy" been sung by Mr. Charles Coborn. Was there not once a rumour that Mr. Arthur Symons was to fly with his Muse from Vigo-street to Leicester-square?

And the other "turns" boast a pedigree as illustrious and as long. Acrobats and jugglers, bears and dogs, by the same feats and the same tricks-you can see them in illuminated MSS. and old woodcuts-held Saxon and Norman spellbound, as they hold the Cockney to-day. Not one number of the programme could be cited which has not its mediæval counterpart. More of the past lives in the music-hall than in any other modern institution. And yet, scholars who hang entranced upon the old woman's faltering tale, who collect odd scraps of the peasant's superstitions, who burrow into graves of ancient Britons, would be insulted were you to propose, seriously and studiously, a visit to the "Troc." or the "Met." For centuries. Englishmen have been shaping their variety entertainment into its present form, and now, like a child with the toy it has been crying for, they are doing their best to destroy it. Nowadays, proprietors and managers, working-men patrons and artistes protest that the variety show is a great moral force, an educational factor, a safeguard against intemperance. Evidently, its days are numbered. When too late, when it is no longer to be studied at first hand, the scholar will learn its value.

ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL.

CONSTANTINE POBEDONOSTSEFF.

Nec deus nec lupus sed homo.

T

HERE is a curious little plant in the Mississippi States known to botanists as Tillandsia usneoides, and to the common run of mortals as American moss, which is probably one of the most interesting parasites of the vegetable kingdom. It attaches itself to two or three kinds of tree, displaying a preference for cypresses and oaks, which it gradually envelops in a fantastic veil of faëry-like tracery and creamy whiteness, producing effects delightful to the beholder and deadly to the once sturdy oak; for it effectually shuts out light and air till the life of the tree is gone out.

The part played by M. Pobedonostseff in the spiritual life of the Russian people offers some striking points of resemblance to that of the American moss in the growth and decay of subtropical trees. He has woven for them and their sovereign a politico-theological network, not devoid of a certain external beauty in the eyes of many, but spiritually air-tight and opaque; and although the shade and shelter may for a time seem grateful and refreshing, they mean darkness and suffocation in the end. But as both the human being and the plant operate after their kind, and only upon a nation or tree which is already diseased, indignation with the Russian statesman would seem as reasonable as resentment against the American moss.

The first time I spoke with M. Pobedonostseff, the Ober-Procuror,*

was one bitterly cold evening in the depth of a Russian winter. Coming out of the arctic air into the heated atmosphere of his sombre residence on the Liteinaïa, I fancied I felt a spiritual chill come over me less bearable than the 20 degrees (Réaumur) of material cold from which I had just escaped. But this was the merest

x

I had met him during the late Emperor's reign, but had not yet learned to regard him as the future ruler of Russia.