in favour of my pronouncing
an unbiassed opinion on the "_new classical play_" ("Historical," if you
like, but not "classical," and there is not the slightest chance of its
becoming a "classic") written by G. STUART OGILVIE, entitled _Hypatia_, and
"_founded on_ KINGSLEY'S _celebrated Novel_," which "celebrated Novel" is,
for me at least, not only "celebrated," but "remarkable," as being one of
the very few works of fiction (excepting always the majority of KINGSLEY'S
works) completely baffling my powers of endurance.

[Illustration: The Tip for the Alexandr(i)a Park Meeting. "_Heraclian_ must
win." Notice the _Rara Nativa Oysteriana Shrub_ in the background.]

[Illustration: Cyrillus Fernandez Gladstonius Episcopus.]

Mr. STUART OGILVIE'S Drama may be a clever adaptation of a story difficult
to adapt; but that his play is powerfully dramatic, even when it arrives at
what, as I conceive, was intended to be its strongest dramatic situation in
the Second Scene of the Third Act, no one but an _Umbra_ (to be
"classical"), a sycophant, a "creature," or a contentious noodle, could
possibly assert. Yet, as a series of _tableaux vivants_, illustrating
scenes in the public and private life of _Issachar_ the Jew,--and that
Jew Mr. BEERBOHM TREE, so artistically made up as to be absolutely
unrecognisable by those who know him best,--the action is decidedly
interesting up to the end of the Third Act. After that, all is tumult. The
gay and seductive _Orestes_, Prefect of Alexandria (carefully played by Mr.
LEWIS WALLER) is slain, anyhow, all higgledy-piggledy, by the Jew,
_Issachar_, whose seductive daughter _Ruth_ (sweetly and gently represented
by Miss OLGA BRANDON) this gay LOTHARIO of a Prefect has contrived, not,
apparently, with any great difficulty, to lead astray, or, to put it
"classically," to seduce from the narrow path of such virtue as is common
alike to Pagan, Jew, and Christian. As for handsome _Hypatia_ herself,
magnificent though Miss JULIA NEILSON be as a classic model for a painter,
she is nowhere, dramatically, in the piece, when contrasted with the
unhappy Jewish Family of two. It is the story of _Issachar_, his daughter
and _Orestes_, that absorbs the interest; and, as to what becomes of
_Cyril_ and his Merry Monks, of _Philammon_ (which, when pronounced, sounds
like a modern Cockney-rendering of PHILIP HAMMOND, with the aspirate
omitted and the final "d" dropped), of old _Theon_ (who never appears but
he is