suppose any man will be found bold enough to say that farmers are now making money-in fact, if the truth were told, we should very likely be informed that any little money which even the richest of our farmers may still possess is rapidly leaving them, and that they are paying their rents as well as the costs of their living out of capital. This is a sad state of matters and it is impossible that it can go on much longer. How is it possible that our farmers can continue to pay heavy rents, in many cases under unjust restrictions, and compete with the American farmers, who, under more favourable climatic conditions, practically sit rent free? Our land laws have much to answer for, and the sooner they are put on a better and more just footing the better. The internal trade of no country can prosper when farming is bad and most of its farmers are in a state bordering on bankruptcy.

Food.-Owing to the blessings of free trade outside, our food supply is plentiful and comparatively cheap, but we have to import the greater part of it. Without cheap food in this country multitudes of our fellow countrymen would die of starvation every year, and without cheap food we could not possibly have cheap labour: while without cheap labour again we could not do an export trade, and without an export trade we should cease to exist as a manufacturing nation.

Our great competitor, the United States, is even now still our best customer, but how long this will continue it is hard to say, seeing she is already supplying our colonies and ourselves with many of our own kind of manufactures. The United States, again, can grow everything in the shape of food which she may ever require within her own borders, and could supply all our wants in that respect besides. The only advantage we have over the United States is, as I have said, that we have cheap labour, and because of our cheap labour, and that only, can we send into her markets raw material and manufactured goods despite her heavy import duties. The import duties of the United States, however, are being gradually but surely lowered, and she is tending towards the adoption of free trade. When the United States adopt free trade, or anything approaching it, the price of labour in America will come down, and the American people will then be able to compete with us in our own country and run us out of the race, unless we, in the interim, develop our resources, stir ourselves up, and show ourselves as progressive and far advanced as she undoubtedly is in the industrial arts and sciences.

Resources. It should be remembered that our resources in this country-great in our eyes though these may be-are really of little moment when compared with the illimitable resources of the United States. Any one from the old country who has travelled over that vast domain, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the VOL. XXI.-No. 124.

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great northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, cannot fail to be impressed by its vastness and the greatness of its natural riches. Everything that man or the hand of man can require is to be found within the borders of the United States, and its people can be shut-as it wereentirely out from the rest of the world, and still live on in plenty and even in superabundance. We, on the other hand, notwithstanding our great mineral resources, owing to the multitude of human beings within so comparatively small an area and to our ungenial climate, could not live even for a day without aid from the rest of the world. Under the heading of 'Food,' I referred to the fact that we were blessed with free trade outside, meaning of course that, with the exception of certain luxuries not absolutely necessary, the world was allowed to send us in, duty free, all kinds of necessary food, raw material and manufactured articles. I am afraid this is, however, not quite an unmixed blessing, seeing that while the rest of the world can send in their wares to us duty free, we really have not free trade by any means amongst ourselves, inside the borders of the United Kingdom. Foolish as we may think the policy of our great competitor to be, under Protection outside, the Government of the United States is not quite so foolish as to put a load on the internal trade, and on the progress of its people, within its own borders in the manner our Government does.

The cost of transit of goods is very much heavier in Great Britain than it is in America, and our governing powers seem to agree with our great railway companies, that our competitors from the outside ought to have the preference. To give a single case: goods can actually be sent from New York to London, viâ Liverpool or Glasgow, at a less cost for freight and carriage than we, the British people, can send similar goods by the same rail from Liverpool or Glasgow to London, or vice versa.

I could go on enumerating many more disadvantages under which we labour in this country, but space forbids. I think sufficient has been said to show the true state of inatters, and that a remedy must be found somehow or other, and that speedily, if we are in the future to hold our own against our all-powerful antagonist.

Our great competitor-being the greatest agricultural, manufacturing, and mining nation in the world, with unlimited credit, and being besides essentially British,' and having eight thousand daily newspapers-is no unworthy foeman; we must therefore be up and doing while there is yet time to clear the decks of all unnecessary dead-weight.

It may be noted that the Americans are trying to show us in this year of grace what they can produce in invention and manufactures, by holding an exhibition of purely American mechanism and manufactures in London, which is likely to be the Jubilee exhibition (for London at any rate). It should be known that this

exhibition is neither instituted nor supported by the American Government, but is a purely private though gigantic speculation. got up by some of the most eminent men and manufacturers in the United States; and the mere fact that such an exhibition, solely composed of our great competitor's wares, should take place in the capital of the commercial world, and in the heart of our empire, shows the pluck of the Americans and their determination to cut us ultimately out of the running, even in our own country, if they possibly can.

When was ever such an exhibition held, in a foreign country. without Government assistance, by any other nation in the whole annals of the world?

Considering the great advance the people of the United Kingdom have made during the past fifty years, in spite of the heavy weights hung on them, by use and wont' and all other remnants of feudal traditions, it surely stands to reason that, under more favourable circumstances, the advance will be proportionately greater.

How comes it that the essentially British' Americans are so goahead and inventive, if not because they are enlightened and progressive-running lightly, as it were, in the race?

Why again are the mass of the people in the old country (of the same race as the Americans) so comparatively slow, and to all appearance so non-inventive-if not because they are unenlightened and lethargic-running heavily laden in the race, looking back to the past rather than forward to the future?

In the language of a high authority, 'the old nations of the earth creep on at a snail's pace, while the American Republic thunders past with the rush of the express.' Why should this be? Who is to blame for the existing state of matters?

In a free, constitutionally governed country like the United Kingdom, is it not time that the mass of the people were waking up, and insisting on their representatives and statesmen reading the signs of the times, and seeing that the disadvantages under which they labour as a nation are removed, and that the whole country is really governed by the people, and for the good of the people, in every sense?

JAMES KEITH.

AN ACTOR'S NOTES.

No. 4.

M. COQUELIN ON ACTORS AND ACTING.

It is some years since I had the privilege of recording in this Review a few casual observations connected with the Drama. They related chiefly to characters in Shakespeare, and had no personal drift. My renewal of them now is suggested by the article which M. Coquelin has contributed to the May number of Harper's Magazine, and by certain personal considerations which are an inevitable result when one player has undertaken to criticise his fellows. As a rule, this kind of review is much to be deprecated, for it is easy to conceive that, if every artist were to rush into print with his opinions of his compeers, there would be a disagreeable rise in the social temperature. Criticism is generally sufficient in the hands of the professors of the art; but when an actor takes up its functions for the enlightenment of other actors, and, with the freedom of M. Coquelin, invites comparisons and suggests parallels, he runs no little risk of a grave misapprehension of his purpose. I take it for granted, however, that in this instance the object of the writer is to lay down certain immutable principles of the actor's art.

I do not propose to follow M. Coquelin through the details of his thesis, which contains a comforting proportion of truisms. Nor is it necessary to devote much space to the initial difficulty-which, by the way, he only discovers at the end of his discourse-namely, the difference between English and French ideas of natural acting. This difference may be considerable enough, but it need not be made greater by hasty generalisation. Even my insular training does not, I hope, disqualify me from an intelligent admiration of M. Coquelin's genuine accomplishments; nor does it, I venture to think, blunt my perception of the misdirected zeal with which he associates the elements necessary to make up the art of what he calls true portraiture. In a word, I believe that he completely misses the vital essence of tragedy, and that his criticism is of the earth earthy.

It is hardly within the scope of this note that I should discuss with M. Coquelin as to how far the resources of a comedian may be suitable for tragic parts. There seems to be a deep-rooted conviction in his mind that the qualities which enable an actor to observe certain

types of character, and to embody their salient features in a consistent whole, will invariably enable him to scale the heights of the poetic drama. But the most odd feature of this assumption is his labour to prove that an actor must give to each character a separate physiological maintenance, so that every fresh impersonation may begin the world with a new voice and a new body. That an artist, with an individuality so marked as M. Coquelin's, should imagine that his identity can be entirely lost seems singular. It must be granted that this art of transformation, even in part, is of great importance in that large range of the drama where M. Coquelin is quite at home, and where the purely mimetic faculty has its chief significance. When, however, we are asked to believe that the representation of a great tragic part depends on the simulation of a physical apparatus which the actor has not previously exhibited, we must seek refuge in a respectful incredulity. It would almost seem as if M. Coquelin, in the midst of his dissertation on the significance of a wrinkle, had lost sight of the fact that in tragedy and the poetic drama it is rather the soul of the artist than his form which is moulded by the theme. Edmund Kean sometimes passed from one part to another with little more external variation than was suggested by a corked moustache; but the poetry, the intensity, the fiery passion of the man, made his acting the most real and vivid impersonation that his contemporaries had seen. M. Coquelin perhaps takes it for granted that the actress is exempt from the burden of change the perpetual metamorphosis -to which he dooms the actor. If there be no such exemption, then the task of the artist who must vary her face and figure for Rosalind, Juliet, and Imogen is likely to become unpopular. What did Rachel owe to any transformation of physique? She, as M. Coquelin must be well aware, was the most trained actress of her time. She knew all that Samson could teach; she spared no elaboration of art; but all this experience and labour would have counted for little without the divine fire which made her so great. This electric quality is the rarest and the highest gift the actor can possess. It is a quality which, in varying degrees, distinguishes those who tread the highest. walks in the drama, and which has given fame to-day to Salvini, Barnay, Booth, and Mounet-Sully.

When M. Coquelin maintains that an actor should never exhibit real emotion, he is treading old and disputed ground. It matters little whether the player shed tears or not, so long as he can make his audience shed them; but if tears can be summoned at his will and subject to his control, it is true art to utilise such a power, and happy is the actor whose sensibility has at once so great a delicacy and discipline. In this respect the actor is like the orator. Eloquence is all the more moving when it is animated and directed by a fine and subtle sympathy which affects the speaker though it does not master him. It is futile to deny absolutely to the actor such impulses as touch the heart by the sudden appeal of passion or pathos.