the influential reporters of the great
morning papers, fortunately, are animated by a love of truth and
justice."

Monsieur Sandeau looked at me, and smiled as be remarked,--

"Oh! as for them, they don't care a whit for piece or author or public.
They think of nothing but showing off themselves. Monsieur Theophile
Gautier has no care except to display the wealth of a palette which
mistook its vocation when it sought to obtain from pen, ink, and paper
those colors which pencil and canvas alone can give. He discards
sentiments, ideas, characters, dialogue, probability, intellectual
delicacy, everything which raises man above wood or stone. He would be
the very first writer of the age, if the world would agree to suppress
everything like heart and soul. He is never more at ease than when he
has to report a piece whose literary beauties are its splendid scenery
and costumes. He will dismiss the subject, the plot, the characters, and
the details in five lines; while fifteen columns will not suffice for
all the wonders of the decorations. If you ask him to send you to some
person most familiar with contemporary dramatic art, instead of sending
you to Alexandre Dumas, the elder or the younger, to Ponsard, or to
Augier, he will send you to the celebrated scene-painters, to Ciceri or
Sechan or Cambon. As for Monsieur Jules Janin, of whom I am very fond,
he is--You have sometimes been to concerts where virtuosos play
variations on the sextuor of "Lucie," or the trio of "William Tell," or
the duet of "Les Huguenots"? You listen attentively, and do at first
detect a phrase here and a phrase there which vaguely recall the work of
Donizetti, or of Rossini, or of Meyerbeer; but in an instant the
virtuoso himself forgets all about them. You have nothing but volley
after volley of notes, a musical storm, tempest, avalanche; the
primitive idea is fathoms deep under water, and when it is caught again
it is drowned. Now Monsieur Jules Janin has had for the last
five-and-twenty years the business of executing brilliant variations
upon the piano of dramatic criticism. He acts like the virtuosos you
hear at concerts. He writes, for conscience' sake, the name of the
author and the title of the play at the head of his dramatic report, and
then off he goes, heels over head, with variation and variation, and
variation and variation again, in French and in Latin, until at last no
human being can tell what he is after, where he is going, what he