hat self-respecting
heroine would abandon her husband and children for sin and a paltry five
thousand a year? To the heroine of the past--to the clergyman's daughter
or the lady artist--he was dangerous. The modern heroine misbehaves
herself with nothing below Cabinet rank.

I turn to something less pretentious, a weekly periodical that my wife
tells me is the best authority she has come across on blouses. I find in
it what once upon a time would have been called a farce. It is now a
"drawing-room comedietta. All rights reserved." The _dramatis personae_
consist of the Earl of Danbury, the Marquis of Rottenborough (with a
past), and an American heiress--a character that nowadays takes with
lovers of the simple the place formerly occupied by "Rose, the miller's
daughter."

I sometimes wonder, is it such teaching as that of Carlyle and Tennyson
that is responsible for this present tendency of literature? Carlyle
impressed upon us that the only history worth consideration was the life
of great men and women, and Tennyson that we "needs must love the
highest." So literature, striving ever upward, ignores plain Romola for
the Lady Ponsonby de Tompkins; the provincialisms of a Charlotte Bronte
for what a certain critic, born before his time, would have called the
"doin's of the hupper succles."

The British Drama has advanced by even greater bounds. It takes place
now exclusively within castle walls, and--what Messrs. Lumley & Co.'s
circular would describe as--"desirable town mansions, suitable for
gentlemen of means." A living dramatist, who should know, tells us that
drama does not occur in the back parlour. Dramatists have, it has been
argued, occasionally found it there, but such may have been dramatists
with eyes capable of seeing through clothes.

I once wrote a play which I read to a distinguished Manager. He said it
was a most interesting play: they always say that. I waited, wondering
to what other manager he would recommend me to take it. To my surprise
he told me he would like it for himself--but with alterations.

"The whole thing wants lifting up," was his opinion. "Your hero is a
barrister: my public take no interest in plain barristers. Make him the
Solicitor General."

"But he's got to be amusing," I argued. "A Solicitor General is never
amusing."

My Manager pondered for a moment. "Let him be Solicitor General for
Ireland," he suggested.

I made a note of it.

"Your heroine," he