stunned for a full minute. (_To the_
Usher.) Send the Divisional Surgeon into my room at once, and fetch an
ambulance. The Court will now adjourn.

[_Loud applause, which was instantly suppressed._

_Mr. Pheasant_ (_sternly_).> This Court is not a Prize-Ring.

* * * * *

"A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE" AT THE AVENUE.

[Illustration: Alexander the Less and the preux Chevalier.]

First of all, the title of the piece is against it. _The Struggle for
Life_ suggests to the general British Public, unacquainted with the
name of DAUDET, a melodrama of the type of _Drink_, in which a variety
of characters should be engaged in the great struggle for existence.
It is suggestive of strikes, the great struggle between Labour and
Capital, between class and class, between principal and interest,
between those with moral principles and those without them. It
is suggestive of the very climax of melodramatic sensation, and,
being suggestive of all this to the majority, the majority will be
disappointed when it doesn't get all that this very responsible
title has led them to expect. Those who know the French novel will
be dissatisfied with the English adaptation of it, filtered, as it
has been, through a French dramatic version of the story. So much
for the title. For the play itself, as given by Messrs. BUCHANAN
and HORNER,--the latter of whom, true to ancestral tradition, will
have his finger in the pie,--it is but an ordinary drama, strongly
reminding a public which knows its DICKENS of the story of _Little
Em'ly_, with _Vaillant_ for _Old Peggotty_, _Lydie_ for _Little
Em'ly_, _Antonin Caussade_ for _Ham_, and _Paul Astier_ for
_Steerforth_. Perhaps it would be carrying the resemblance too far to
see in _Rosa Dartle_, with her scorn For "that sort of creature," the
germ of _Esther de Seleny_. Mix this with a situation from _Le Monde
ou l'on s'ennuie_, spoilt in the mixing, and there's the drama.

[Illustration: The Avenger.]

For the acting--it is admirable. Miss GENEVIEVE WARD is superb as
_Madame Paul Astier_, and it is not her fault, but the misfortune
of the part, that the wife of _Paul_ is a woman old enough to be his
mother, with whose sufferings--with her eyes wide open, having married
a man of whose worthlessness she was aware,--it is impossible to feel
very much sympathy. She is old enough to have known better. Mr. GEORGE
ALEXANDER'S performance of the scoundrel _Paul_ leaves little to be
desi