st be said also that in his intellectual honesty, in his
respect for the immitigable laws of character, he rarely falls short. He
lacks the clear serenity of Sophocles, the depth and the breadth of the
myriad-minded Shakspere, the humorous toleration of Moliere. The great
Greek, the great Englishman, and the great Frenchman, are, all of them,
liberal and sane and wholesome, whatever their subject-matter may be;
and here it is that the Scandinavian is felt to be inferior. There are
few of his social dramas in which we cannot find more than a hint of
abnormal eccentricity or of morbid perversity; and this is the reason
why the most of them fail to attain the dignity of true and lofty
tragedy.

Perhaps it is with Wagner that Ibsen should be grouped, rather than with
Sophocles and Shakspere and Moliere. They are the two master-spirits of
the stage in the nineteenth century. They are both of them consummate
craftsmen, having assimilated every profitable device of their
predecessors and having made themselves chiefs, each in his own art. And
yet with all their witchery and all their power, we may doubt whether
their work will resist the criticism of the twentieth century, because
there is at the core of it an exaggeration or disproportion which the
future is likely to perceive more and more clearly in the receding
perspective of time.

(1905.)

THE ART OF THE STAGE-MANAGER

As civilization becomes more and more complex, we can find more frequent
instances of "specialization of function," as the scientists term it.
Only a few years ago, engineering succeeded in getting itself recognized
as one of the professions; and it has already split up into half a dozen
branches, at least, and there are now not only civil engineers and
mechanical engineers and mining engineers, but also electrical
engineers--and even chemical engineers. The invention of the steel-frame
building has brought into existence a special class of artizans known as
"housesmiths," a word probably unintelligible to our British cousins.
Sir Leslie Stephen, in his delightful 'Studies of a Biographer,' has a
scholarly yet playful paper on the 'Evolution of the Editor'; and Mr.
W.J. Henderson, in his interesting book on the 'Orchestra and Orchestral
Music,' traces the development of the conductor--the musician whose
duties are as important as they are novel, and who is not now expected
to be able himself to play upon any particular instrument.

"It i