rformers. The actors were in those days afraid
of the Pit, especially at the Park, of the fourth bench from the
orchestra, where the magnates of the pen sat watchful, and where old
Nestors of the drama delivered their verdicts in terms that no one
dared to gainsay. The Pit was entered by cellar steps, and through a
half-lighted, subterranean passage. Decorative art, as we see it now
in the full bloom of the Madison Square auditorium and Mr. Daly's
lobby, had not even given a hint of its coming."

In _The Galaxy_ for February, 1868, Bunce ventures to survey "Some
of Our Actors" from the standpoint of deploring the pre-Raphaelite
realism of the modern school. He scored the attempted "truth" and
"fidelity" of Matilda Heron, and, in considering Maggie Mitchell's
_Fanchon,_ he bespoke the cause of ideality, as necessary in _Fanchon_
as in _Juliet._ "Modern comedy acting," he declares, "is usually a
bright, brisk touch-and-go affair, suited to modern plays; but to the
mellow and artistic style of a former generation, it is as the light
claret wines, now so much in use, to crusty old port."

Except in the instances of our comedians, like Murdoch, with his
"lightness of manner, that grace, which I have described elsewhere as
snuffing a candle in a way to make you feel that snuffing candles is
the poetry of life;" Harry Placide, with whose retirement went the
retirement of _Sir Peter Teazle_ and _Sir Harcourt Courtley_, ("When
Placide and Gilbert are gone," he writes, "Sheridan will have to be
shelved"); Holland, with his intense fun in eccentric bits; Brougham,
without whom "The Rivals" is difficult to endure--apart from these the
stage of the time, to Bunce, was not all it should be. He valued
at their worth the romantic extravagances of the Wallack family;
he applauded the sound judgment, and deplored the hard manner of
Davenport; he viewed calmly what he regarded to be an overestimation
of Edwin Booth--one of the first criticisms of an avowedly negative
character I have seen aimed directly at this actor. In other words,
Bunce fought hard against the encroachment of the new times upon the
acting of his early theatre days. The epitome of his old-time attitude
is to be found in _Appleton's Journal_ for April 3, 1869. His better
mood was to be met with in his discussion of the players of Ellen
Tree's type. Here are his words of censure against the new order:

"If we old files are to be believed, the art of acting is dying out,