say that she loves him ardently and selfforgetfully; that her love survives the loathing which the discovery that she is the hated empress produces in his mind, that she commits a murder for his sake, and ultimately sacrifices herself for him, braving the wrath of her husband by flying to nurse him when he has been wounded in the insurrection. She is dis. covered with him, having just poisoned him by mistake, and Justinian's execu tioner is putting the cord of death about her neck when the curtain falls.

of her amours is on the point of detection, | space to describe the plot; let it suffice to she takes poison to escape ruin. There is nothing to attract about her, except phys ical beauty skilfully improved by art; and, what is worse, there is nothing to admire. Sir Henry Pottinger's heroine is cast in a very different mould. In his hands Theodora becomes noble and elevated, while not ceasing to be impulsive. A bold attempt this for one who seeks to keep so close to history as Sir Henry does. Yet his gallantry has been rewarded by no inconsiderable success. She is a woman of powerful character, born among foul surroundings, whose innate superiority shakes them off by degrees, purifying herself, and making herself worthy of the love of a great man and of the station to which he raises her. She is hard, and sometimes fierce, but she renounces the pleasures of sense for the delights of pride and ambition, not without a sense of the duties which her power involves. It is a fine conception, worked out with no little skill; and one would like to think there was more basis for it than history unfortunately supplies.

As I have not had the good fortune to see either Mr. Rhangabe's tragedy, or the Italian piece of "Theodora," which it seems was published (whether acted or not I know not) some time ago, I hasten on to M. Sardou's play.

This gifted dramatist has happily caught and reproduced the salient and superficial features of the character. His Theodora is haughty, and haughty not with the pretentiousness of a parvenue, but the dignity of one who seems to have found her natural place. She is witty, clear, keen, and sparkling in every sentence she utters. She is spirited, full of courage in the great insurrection scene, full of resource in council, and at last reckless of her own safety.

She is, however, also passionate, and even tender in her passion. Despising her weak and pedantic husband, she seeks satisfaction for her old vagabondism by wandering alone, or in the congenial company of Antonina (the faithless wife of Belisarius), through the purlieus of the capital. Here, on the occasion of an earthquake, she has met, been helped by, and fallen in love with a Greek youth named Andreas, who has come from the schools of Athens full of philosophy and generous aspirations for political freedom. She represents herself to him as a young widow. Myrtha by name; he reciprocates her affection, and we find her stealing to his house for an interview. I have not

I need hardly disclaim the doctrine that a novelist or dramatist who chooses a historical subject is to be bound to adhere to the facts of history. Such a canon would strike at most great historical plays and novels, and would make such writing well-nigh impossible, because it constantly happens that the history of famous persons does not supply those love plots which the public taste demands, or separates by long intervals of time events which the dramatist must crowd together. It would be absurd, therefore, to complain of M. Sardou or Dr. Dahn for having abandoned the truth of history, and made their Theodora return after her coronation to the delinquencies of her stormy youth. But the remark may be permitted, that this presentation renders her character far less striking and unique. Most women would doubtless have so returned. Had Theodora been an ordinary adventuress, such as those out of which modern France makes its heroines, she would have had an end like her beginning. What makes her splendid and marvellous is that she replaces the lust of pleasure by the lust of power, and carries that intensity which had made her the wonder of her lovers and the terror of her companions into the sway of a mighty empire. There is no levity, no weakness, about her; she seems, to use the expression of Procopius, like a demon sent upon earth to work men's ruin, equally by her beauty and her resist. less will.

I do not make this a reproach against M. Sardou, for his Parisian public would have insisted that the courtesan empress should be a courtesan still. Theodora, the builder of penitentiaries, the stern enforcer of moral regulations, would have been insipid to them unless caught in violating her own laws. Besides, his plot required it. But there is a criticism to which the portrait is fairly open. If any contradictions can be said to be impossi. ble in the feminine character, his heroine

is a moral impossibility. A woman with | call constitutionalism. Everybody accepts such a past could never have lavished on despotism as the natural and necessary Andreas the tenderness, the self-sacrific thing: nobody has any idea of improveing devotion, she displays. With such a ment, except the replacing a harsh despot past; yes, and with such a present. Be- by a milder one. Andreas might have cause her passion for Andreas is not a carried away from that University of single grand passion which has come in Athens which Justinian had just closed, a to fill up the void of her life; it is one of contempt for the theological controvermany amours which she roams the streets sies of the day, and an indignation at the of her capital to seek; it is, when first moral corruption of society; but a zeal brought before us, a diversion, a passing for political freedom - no! that he would excitement, not a love to which that pomp never have learned from those last sucand power, in which we have just seen cessors of Plato, Damascius and his five her exulting, are to be lightly sacrificed. brethren, who had gone to seek at the court of Chosroes Anushirvan the repose which Justinian's intolerance denied them in the Roman Empire. There were at least three oppositions to Justinian-oppositions which probably united in the great insurrection; the dynastic opposition of those who clung to the family of the late emperor Anastasius, the ecclesiastical opposition of the Monophysites, the sporting opposition (if one may call it. so) of the green faction in the chariot races. But of a reforming opposition,.of. aspirations for freedom, not a trace.

Poets, dramatists, novelists, must no doubt often deviate from, as well as add to, the facts of history when they choose a historical subject. But is it not true that the less they deviate, so much the better do they succeed? No one has stuck so close to his authorities as Shakespeare does in his historical plays of course I do not speak of half fabulous tales like "Macbeth," but of the English historical plays, and the splendid triad of Roman tragedies. The same remark applies, though with less force, to Schiller and to Walter Scott; perhaps even to Dumas. It is a question not as between historic truth and artistic truth, but of finding the highest artistic truth in adhering to historic truth, not necessarily in incident, but certainly in character. It is not so easy to improve upon nature in character drawing, the highest and most difficult of all artistic efforts.

A not less curious piece of modernism. occurs in the horror of the Frankish war rior who fights for the emperor at the slaughter inflicted on the rebels. He tells Justinian that twenty thousand have fallen. Justinian answers, with disappointment, "Pas plus?" and Charibert: delivers his indignation in a fine sentence. To judge the Franks by their performances at that very time in Gaul and Italy, there was nothing they enjoyed so much. as a blood bath, even when the victims were not their enemies.

In the accessories of his drama, M. Sardou has taken enormous pains to reproduce the manners, the court usages, the daily life, of Constantinople. In fact, he gives us, through the speeches of the Justinian's name suggests a word on the. minor characters, instructive discourses aspect in which the play presents him. on palace etiquette, on the factions of the Cruel, cowardly, suspicious, he is the most hippodrome, and I know not what else. despicable person in it. Such a view may. He has been seconded with equal skill be justified dramatically as supplying a and knowledge by M. Duquesnel, who un- foil to the courage and promptitude of dertakes the scenery and decorations. Theodora; and it gives scope for some Costumes, architecture, furniture, are not very powerful acting. Perplexing as Jusonly beautiful in themselves and exquis- tinian's character is, there is nothing to itely harmonious in color, but have evi- prove him a coward, and, so far from dently been studied with infinite care and being cruel, he was, for a despot, singu under the guidance of accomplished ar- larly lenient. He usually spared, somechæologists. But with all this anxiety to times he pardoned, persons detected in reproduce the Byzantium of the sixth cen- conspiracies against him. He treated tury, our author is betrayed into anach- captive enemies with a leniency which ronisms more serious than a mistake in strongly contrasts with Cæsar's behavior dress or phrase. Andreas, the philosophic to the gallant Vercingetorix. The harsh votary of freedom, is impossible. In all acts of his reign, plentiful enough no those centuries, from the Antonines down- doubt, were acts of policy, not of cruelty. wards, there is nothing more strange to Unfeeling good nature is perhaps the us moderns than the absence of efforts for phrase that best describes him. And political reform, for liberty, for what we│whatever may have been his weaknesses,

he was an abler ruler than the weak and | photographed, for her from the mosaic in wavering pedant whom M. Sardou brings before us.

San Vitale at Ravenna. She has rendered the character as M. Sardou wrote it for her with marvellous force, and not less marvellous versatility. From the languid insolence of the empress receiving on her throne the obeisance of the ambassador of Chosroes, to the wild despair of the mistress of Andreas wailing over his corpse, there is not a point in the part to which she does not give the most perfect and finished expression. Yet Mlle. Bernhardt's acting does not answer to the conception of the empress which we form either from her career or her face. There

a winding, waving, coiling, entwining, fas. cinating air. Theodora was no serpent, but a tigress, or perhaps a leopard, glossy and graceful, but glaring straight at her prey, and ready to fell it with a spring. She was small in figure, we are told, and her features were delicate; but her eyes had a fierce intensity that affrighted those who approached her. One seems to find something of this in the Ravenna mosaic, though in it she wears a look of demure devotion, and bears offerings to the shrine of the saint.

I have no space left for a criticism of the play generally. It brims over with cleverness, and though the action flags in the earlier scenes, several of those in the middle and end are effective to the last degree; they give thrilling situations, where every phrase and every gesture tells. If the merit of a piece be to bring out good acting, a sufficient test for the spectator to apply, nothing better can be imagined. When one looks at the drama as literature, different questions arise, and receive less satisfactory answers. There is an air of the serpent about this acting, is a want of deep human interest. It is in Theodora that the passion of the piece is concentrated; and Theodora's passion (for the reason given above) seems to ring false. There is also a want of dignity. Of the colloquialism of the diction no complaint (it is said) must be made, for the author aims at realism, and he attains it in making the charioteers talk like jockeys. We may well believe that in the conjugal disputes of Justinian and Theodora he scolded like a bourgeois husband, and she stung like one of M. Zola's hero ines. We feel how much Constantinople, the city of pleasure to that vanished world, may have resembled Paris, the metropolis of pleasure to this one. The realism is complete. But is realism here in its right place? Does not our imagination when it is roused by these famous names, which, whatever they may have been in life, shine down upon us through the vista of the ages with that glory which the reverence of many generations and the tribute of poets like Dante have lent them, do not our eyes when they are daz zled by the splendid presentation of the arts and pomp of a refined civilization and a gorgeous court, demand that the tone and manners and language of the persons who bear these names and tread these halls shall rise into the higher air of poetry? I found myself wishing for verse, perhaps even for music, to keep the piece on that level to which imagination sought to raise it, and from which the dialogue was always dragging it down.

The dialogue, but not the acting — for the acting was worthy of Shakespeare or Corneille. Any one of the five or six leading parts might alone have deserved the attention of a critic, could that attention have been diverted for a moment from the central figure. Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt is said to have spent hours in gazing on the portrait of Theodora, copied, or

Of the moral aspects of the play I need not speak. The frequent obtrusion of the earlier incidents of the heroine's life seems intended not so much to illustrate her character as to pique and whet the morbid taste of an audience; and it suggests that the society which gloats over these allusions may not be morally far removed from the society in which the career of Theodora was possible. To pursue reflections of this kind, however, even if they came well from a foreigner, would be an ungracious return for the enjoyment which Paris offers to lovers of the drama. Whatever lamentations the elder generation of Frenchmen may raise over the decadence of politics and oratory and philosophy, here, at least, is an art in which she still stands far ahead of all other capitals.

JAMES BRYCE.

From Chambers' Journal.

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

"What did you want, Frances? Oh, I quite acknowledge that you have a right to inquire. I hoped, perhaps, I might be spared to-night; I am rather exhausted to-night."

Frances dropped the hand which she had laid upon his arm. actly as you please, papa. I seem to know a great deal oh, a great deal more than I knew at dinner. I don't think I am the same person; and I thought it might save us all, if you would tell me as much as you think I ought to know."

| up the books again, opening and shutting them, looking at the title page now of one, now of another, "did not get on very well. I don't know who was in fault - probably both. She had been married before. She had a son, whom you hear Constance "It shall be ex-speak of as Markham. Markham has been at the bottom of all the trouble. He drove me out of my senses when he was a boy. Now he is a man, so far as I can make out it is he that has disturbed our peace again - hunted us up, and sent Constance here. If you ever meet MarkShe had sat down in her usual place, in ham-and of course now you are sure to her careful little modest pose, a little stiff, meet him- beware of him." Here he a little prim-the training of Mariuccia. made a pause again, and looked with great After Constance, there was something in seriousness at the book in his hand, turnthe attitude of Frances which made hering the leaf to finish a sentence which was father smile, though he was in no mood continued on the next page. for smiling; and it was clear that he could not, that he ought not to escape. He would not sit down, however, and meet her eye. He stood by the table for a few minutes, with his eyes upon the books, turning them over, as if he were looking for something. At last he said, but without looking up: "There is nothing very dreadful to tell; no guilty secret, though you may suppose so. Your mother and I.

"Then I have really a mother, and she is living?" the girl cried.

He looked at her for a moment. "I forgot that for a girl of your age that means a great deal I hadn't thought of it. Perhaps if you knew Yes; you

"I beg your pardon, papa," said Frances; "I am afraid I am very stupid. What relation is Markham to me?"

He looked at her for a moment, then threw down the book with some violence on the table, as if it were the offender. "He is your step brother," he said.

66

My brother? Then I have a brother too?" After a little pause she added: "It is very wonderful, papa, to come into a new world like this all at once. I want to draw my breath."

You

"It is my fault that it comes upon you all at once. I never thought were a very small child when I brought you away. You forgot them all, as was natural. I did not at first know how enhave got a mother, and she is living. Itirely a child forgets; and then then it suppose that seems a very wonderful piece seemed a pity to disturb your mind, and of news?" perhaps set you longing for what it was impossible for you to obtain."

Frances did not say anything. The water came into her eyes. Her heart beat loudly, yet softly, against her young bosom. She had known it, so that she

was

not surprised. The surprise had been broken by Constance's careless talk, by the wonder, the doubt, the sense of impossibility, which had gradually yielded to a conviction that it must be so. Her feeling was that she would like to go now, without delay, without asking any more questions, to her mother. Her mother! and he hadn't thought before how much that meant to a girl of her age!

Mr. Waring was a little disconcerted by having no answer. Of course it meant a great deal to a girl; but still, not so much as to make her incapable of reply ing. He felt a little annoyed, disturbed, perhaps jealous, as Frances herself had been. It was with difficulty that he resumed again; but it had to be done.

It surprised him a little that Frances did not breathe a syllable of reproach. She said nothing. In her imagination she was looking back on these years, won. dering how it would have been had she known. Would life ever be the same, now that she did know? The world seemed to open up round her, so much greater, wider, more full than she had thought of. She had not thought much on the subject. Life in Bordighera was more limited even than life in an English village. The fact that she did not belong to the people among whom she had spent all these years, made a difference; and her father's recluse habits, the few people he cared to know, the stagnation of his life, made a greater difference still. Fran ces had scarcely felt it until that meeting with the Mannerings, which put so many vague ideas into her mind. A child does not naturally inquire into the circum