le good and a great deal of harm.

It is possible that views such as these may be in the minds of those who
wrote the circular of the Church Pastoral Aid Society, and if so they
were justified in writing. If, on the other hand, they were merely
actuated by the Puritanic idea that drama and the theatre are
necessarily immoral, we strongly dissent, for the drama might be made a
very powerful influence for good, and this renders the more regrettable
the fact that, although in some respects there is a little advance
towards the good, it is very slow, and it is doubtful whether the
balance will be turned in our time. There is a greater advance in art
than in morality as far as the theatre is concerned, but even in art the
progress is very disappointing.

An Advantage of French Dramatists

There are many people who entertain the idea that modern French drama is
better than modern English drama; and from this it seems a natural
deduction that the French playwrights of to-day are abler than their
contemporary English dramatists. A study of the large collection of
French plays produced at the New Royalty Theatre by M. Gaston Mayer, as
well as those presented under other managements during the last few
years, and some knowledge of those which have not crossed the unamiable
Channel, causes me to wonder. The careless may make the mistake of
comparing the imported French pieces with the average English plays;
this, of course, is absurd, since only the successful foreign works are
played over here; consequently, for purposes of fair comparison, one
must eliminate not only our failures but our plays of average merit.
Even after the process of elimination has been made there lurks the
danger of error, for when comparing the efforts of our playwrights with
those of Paris one is making a comparison between men working under a
heavy handicap and men unburdened by it. There is a whole world, or at
least a whole half-world, open freely to the French writer into which
the English dramatist is only permitted to crawl furtively. A large
proportion of the foreign works in question, if faithfully translated
and presented in London, would cause a howl of horror, based on the
proposition that some of them are immoral and some are indelicate, and
many both.

No sane people pretend to agree with the observation of some celebrated
person, to the effect that anybody can be witty who is willing to be
indecent; it is not more universally true th