on we have had in this country, of late years,
more than one startling illustration. Archaeological knowledge,
scenic illusion, gorgeous upholstery, sumptuous costumes, have, in the
remembrance of many, been squandered in profusion upon the boards of
one of our London theatres in the getting up of a drama by the
master-dramatist. All this has tended, however, only to realise the more
painfully the inadequacy of the powers, no less of the leading star than
of his whole company, to undertake the interpretation of the dramatic
masterpiece. The spectacle which we are viewing in such an instance is,
no doubt, resplendent; but it is so purely as a spectacle. Everything
witnessed is--

"So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start, for soul is wanting there."

The result naturally is, that the public is disillusioned and that the
management is bankrupt. Another strikingly-contrasted experience of
the present generation is this, that, without any decorations whatever,
enormous audiences have been assembled together, in the old world and
in the new, upon every occasion upon which they have been afforded the
opportunity, to hear a story related by the lips of the writer of it.
And they have been so assembled not simply because the story itself
(every word of it known perfectly well beforehand) was worth hearing
again, or because there was a very natural curiosity to behold the
famous author by whom it had been penned; but, above all, because his
voice, his glance, his features, his every movement, his whole person,
gave to his thoughts and his emotions, whether for tears or for
laughter, the most vivid interpretation.

How it happened, in this instance, that a writer of celebrity like
Charles Dickens became a reader of his own works before large public
audiences may be readily explained. Before his first appearance in
that character professionally--that is, as a public reader, on his own
account--he had enjoyed more than twenty years of unexampled popularity
as a novelist. During that period he had not only securely established
his reputation in authorship, but had evidenced repeatedly, at intervals
during the later portion of it, histrionic powers hardly less remarkable
in their way than those gifts which had previously won for him his
wholly exceptional fame as a writer of imagination.

Among his personal intimates, among all those who knew him best, it had
long come to be recognised that his skill as an impersonator