uce lovely delicate
effects but to present pictures of vivid gorgeous colour so strong and
subtle as to delight the artist and the Philistine. The same phrases
that had been bestowed upon the Empire ballet were lavished by the same
writers upon an entertainment at another house at which, in fact, there
was a horrible debauch of crude, yelping, clashing colours.

The matter is difficult for the managers, or at least for those of them
who have a sense of colour. In one way their position is easy enough; if
they spend a lot of money on the dress and scenery, the press, with rare
exceptions, will gush about the beauty of the setting, however vicious
it may be. The Englishman who uses violent bottled sauces to destroy the
delicate flavour of a sole or to add taste to toasted cheese rules the
roast. People often proclaim that they like "colour"--by "colour" they
mean bright, showy colours. Their taste is that of the negro; give him
plenty of gaudy red and yellow and he is happy.

In modern comedies the difficulty might be avoided, since as a rule
modern people in society do not employ violent colours, and the modern
interiors in most instances exhibit agreeably the influence of the
so-called aesthetic craze. Yet we have plenty of horrors. Ellen Terry in
her interesting biography says that she never settled on her dresses
without seeing whether they would harmonize with the scenery. This
wisdom, alas! is rarely shown, and we very often see a charming interior
ruined by gowns hostile to it in colour.

The question of form in the costumes is somewhat different; yet one
cannot pass from it without expressing regret that the stage is so
weak-minded as to permit itself to be the subject of the maddest
experiments of milliners, and to accept tamely their _rossignols_. A few
of our actresses know how to dress and to wear their gowns; nobody
except the milliners seems to look after the others, and they form the
majority. In many instances, no doubt, the ladies in the cast ought not
to be blamed: they have a very restricted choice, if any. Lately there
was a case where a handsome sum of money was put up by a syndicate for
the ladies' costumes in a play, and nine-tenths of it was appropriated
by the powerful leading lady, leaving for the others a ridiculous
amount.

It is in romantic comedy we suffer most. To begin with, one may assert
the general proposition that the sense of pictorial art on the stage is
entirely conventional and