of a noble pearl necklace upon a scraggy
neck, and, changing the figure, think how disappointing is a bad dinner
served beautifully. There is a French phrase concerning a scanty meal on
a flower-decked table that seems in point: _Il m'a invite a brouter et
je l'ai envoye paitre._ Sydney Smith, after a mean dinner served in a
gorgeous room, observed that he would prefer "a little less gilding and
a little more carving."

Mr H.B. Irving, in a lecture given at the Royal Institution, ascribed
the alleged pre-eminence of actors during the Garrick period to the
weakness of the current drama and the economy in stage-mounting, two
matters that forced the players to tremendous exertion in order to hold
the house, which, by the way, he believes to have been very finely
critical. An audience is more truly observant of plays and playing when
its attention is not distracted by considering the cost of the costumes,
by wondering if the marble pillars are solid, by curiosity as to how the
lighting effects are contrived, and by asking whether the play will run
long enough to earn its initial cost.

Whether the large sums of money expended produce an effect agreeable to
the trained eye is a little outside the topic. Yet it must be suggested
that such beauty as the costly stage pictures present generally belongs
to the category of the very obvious. This is not surprising; if a great
deal of money is spent in order to produce a gorgeous spectacle,
common-sense demands that the result should be to the taste of a vast
number of people, otherwise the management must lose money. It would be
idle to pretend that there are very many playgoers who possess fine
taste, consequently the money must be lavished in order to delight
people with a more or less uncultivated taste. No doubt a great deal of
money may be spent on quiet details, and sometimes is, without the
attention of the ordinary playgoer being drawn to the expenditure, but
the case is exceptional. In plain English, it very rarely happens that
the extravagant sums employed in mounting plays produce a beauty that
appeals successfully to any people save those whose ideas of the
pictorial art are bounded by the exhibitions of the Royal Academy.
Moreover, consideration is paid to the fact that there are Philistines
who will admire a thing merely because they believe it to be costly.

Certainly there is much to be said on the other side, or at least a
great deal is urged by people who belie