;" and "The Deluge."

The great Dumas, like Madame Sand before mentioned, has brought a
vast quantity of religion before the foot-lights. There was his famous
tragedy of "Caligula," which, be it spoken to the shame of the Paris
critics, was coldly received; nay, actually hissed, by them. And why?
Because, says Dumas, it contained a great deal too much piety for the
rogues. The public, he says, was much more religious, and understood him
at once.

"As for the critics," says he, nobly, "let those who cried out against
the immorality of Antony and Marguerite de Bourgogne, reproach me for
THE CHASTITY OF MESSALINA." (This dear creature is the heroine of the
play of "Caligula.") "It matters little to me. These people have but
seen the form of my work: they have walked round the tent, but have not
seen the arch which it covered; they have examined the vases and candles
of the altar, but have not opened the tabernacle!

"The public alone has, instinctively, comprehended that there was,
beneath this outward sign, an inward and mysterious grace: it followed
the action of the piece in all its serpentine windings; it listened for
four hours, with pious attention (avec recueillement et religion), to
the sound of this rolling river of thoughts, which may have appeared to
it new and bold, perhaps, but chaste and grave; and it retired, with its
head on its breast, like a man who had just perceived, in a dream, the
solution of a problem which he has long and vainly sought in his waking
hours."

You see that not only Saint Sand is an apostle, in her way; but Saint
Dumas is another. We have people in England who write for bread, like
Dumas and Sand, and are paid so much for their line; but they don't set
up for prophets. Mrs. Trollope has never declared that her novels are
inspired by heaven; Mr. Buckstone has written a great number of farces,
and never talked about the altar and the tabernacle. Even Sir Edward
Bulwer (who, on a similar occasion, when the critics found fault with
a play of his, answered them by a pretty decent declaration of his own
merits,) never ventured to say that he had received a divine mission,
and was uttering five-act revelations.

All things considered, the tragedy of "Caligula" is a decent tragedy; as
decent as the decent characters of the hero and heroine can allow it
to be; it may be almost said, provokingly decent: but this, it must be
remembered, is the characteristic of the modern French school (nay,