THE year 1776 was a memorable year 'for the race,' if only on three counts: it was the year of the Declaration of Independence; it was the year of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations; and it was the year of the founding of the Burgtheater in Vienna. In that year the 'theatre by the Burg' was made the 'Court and National Theatre' by an edict of the Emperor Joseph II, and was transformed from a playhouse for 'extemporized comedy' to a home for the great classical and national drama. Here it was that many of the great plays of Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, Hebbel, and Grillparzer had their first or among their first performances. Here it was that Shakespeare was chiefly made known to German-speaking audiences during the nineteenth centuryfor it was not long before the Burgtheater became the leading German stage.

In April the birthday of this national institution was celebrated fittingly in Vienna, under the auspices of the national Government - since it is now a State-subsidized theatre. A reception to prominent literary men and artists from Germany was given by the Minister of Education; a speech was made by Dr. Hainisch, the Federal President, and an address of welcome by Franz Herterich, the director. On the evening of April 8, Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm, the first classical production of the old Burgtheater in 1776, was presented. On April 10, the 'Concordia,' a union of authors and journalists, gave a banquet to the staff and ensemble of the theatre.

The Neue Freie Presse devotes a whole supplement to the occasion, with letters of congratulation from distinguished theatrical figures, a statement by Herr Herterich, reminiscences by some of the Burgtheater actors and others, and an article on 'The Spiritual Mission of the Burgtheater in the Republic.' Émile Fabre, the general administrator of the Comédie Française, writes from Paris to congratulate the theatre, and to recall the long history of reciprocity and good-will between the two parallel institutions. 'Great theatrical organizations,' he says, 'like the Burgtheater and the Comédie Française, must feel it their duty to establish fraternal relations over and above national barriers, and it is expecially pleasant on this occasion to remember that neither of us has ever ceased to perform this duty.'

The director, Franz Herterich, remarks on the special problems that confront a theatrical organization that must keep to a certain high standard of literary value and yet not ignore the attitude of its public. A subsidized theatre with a national tradition, he points out, is in a unique position. 'Many of the Burgtheater's patrons think of it as a kind of "first love" in the drama, and since love turns more easily to hatred than to indifference, and is always likely to revert to love, the vacillations of the public are easy to understand. Moreover, it is a perfectly healthy process. Nothing is worse than indifference; love and hate are signs of life; life means struggle, and struggle means

progress. The participation of the public is effective not only at the performances themselves, but as a steady pressure in the choice of plays, and for a theatre that has cultural duties the pressure is not always easy to meet. But by yielding to it where possible, and resisting it when necessary, such a theatre can hold its own and fulfill its proper rôle.'

In an interview with a representative of the Observer Herr Herterich spoke of the relation between the Burgtheater and the English drama. Its devotion to Shakespeare has already been mentioned; on the eve of the recent festival, Hamlet was performed, and Macbeth and Coriolanus followed shortly. Among modern English playwrights, Bernard Shaw is much the most important to the theatre; his Cæsar and Cleopatra and Pygmalion were in its repertory for fourteen years, and the current season included The Philanderer and Major Barbara. Within the scope of the festival productions was a special performance of John Galsworthy's Windows, broadcast by the Radio Company, and preceded by a speech on the author by Herr Herterich himself.

THE ROSENKAVALIER' IN LONDON LONDON recently followed Dresden in giving an enthusiastic reception to Richard Strauss's film opera, the Rosenkavalier, at a production for which the composer himself came to London. The Tivoli Cinema Theatre demonstrated its desire to make a great event of the occasion by doubling its ordinary orchestra and giving up two rows of the stalls to accommodate it.

The general attitude of newspaper critics to the experiment was that the film, though excellent in its way, was hardly worthy of the music. 'Hof

mannsthal's admirable libretto, as was to be expected,' said the Manchester Guardian correspondent, 'lost all its subtlety and intimacy in being reduced to two dimensions. It is probably too much to expect any film star to take the part of a woman verging on middle age, and the conversion of the Princess into a beauty in the full bloom of youth robs the story not only of its whole point but also of its bitter-sweet atmosphere and mellow humanity. But since it is not in the nature of the cinema to paint in half-tones, and the original version could only have been worsened, it was probably preferable, if the adaptation was done at all, to adjust it frankly to the idiom of the screen. The Rosenkavalier makes quite a good working film-story so long as one is content to accept the conversion on its own terms.'

'But if the film was disappointing,' says the Times, 'the music made up for it. It was delightful to hear the old tunes; and the additions that have been made. are of the same calibre. We could readily forgive the Field-Marshal's rather tiresome campaign for the sake of the music that accompanies it. The first appearance of the Prince was the occasion for a brilliant piece of military music in the eighteenth-century vein. It might almost have been written by Dr. Arne, and yet bears the characteristic stamp of Strauss's style. . The performance was adequate in the best sense of the word, without attaining to real brilliance. We suppose it is not possible to obtain absolute synchronization of the music with the action, and must be grateful for the one or two places where a really dramatic effect is obtained by the simultaneous entry of a character and a new theme. The audience applauded enthusiastically, but we fancy that it was a tribute to the composer rather than to the film.'

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A DOUGHTY LETTER

Two unpublished letters by the late Charles M. Doughty have been turned up among his papers and published in the Times. Both were written in February 1877, at Medain Salih in the desert, halfway between Damascus and Jidda. One is addressed to a friendly subordinate of the British Consul in Damascus, and the other - which was never delivered, but returned to its sender after an interval of two years to his aunt, Miss Hotham, at Tunbridge Wells. At the time he wrote these letters, the author of Arabia Deserta still had before him eighteen months of weary wandering, in the desert, on the sea, and in India, — and it is clear that he writes to his aunt with the sense that it may be his last communication with the outside world:

I am happy to send you some news of me from these parts. Your thoughts have perhaps followed me with some anxiety into Arabia. I came down then with the Mecca Pilgrims without misadventure from Damascus. At every station is a fortress for the necessary water. Such an one there is here, where I have lodged now some two months, visiting the antiquities there, certainly not without danger - principally that I am not a muslim. The pilgrims return in their upward journey in two more days, with whom I send you these lines.

Without some special acquaintance with Arabia and an excellent map in your hand you would not follow the routes. I am some 130 miles N. of Medina. I have not even the smallest intention to visit either Medina or Mecca.

My thoughts return to you out of this obscure corner of the world. Though I cannot see you, I wish you all the health and happiness that can be. This small paper will show you at least that I am alive. I am in health, thanks to the warm climate, without other food than corn and rice in this prison.

My hands are busy and my head also. The Arabs arrive at every moment now and press in upon me talking and shouting, greeting, questioning, begging tobacco. I am upon the eve of departing upon an adventurous journey.

My love to such as love me that enquire of me,

Your affect. Nephew,
CHARLES M. DOUGHTY

FROM IDEALISM TO REALISM 'IRISH literature has had the most astonishing transformations within twenty-five years,' says the Irish Statesman. 'About the beginning of this century it had won international recognition as the most idealistic literature then being created. The concep tion of the Irish genius as imaginative, poetic, and mystical had hardly become established abroad when at home the younger Irish writers were in revolt against the ideals of their elders, and now Sean O'Casey, James Joyce, and Liam O'Flaherty are winning for Ireland the repute of a realism more intimate, intense, and daring than any other realism in contemporary literature. We doubt whether the later phase would have been possible without the former. It is really the same passionate intensity of mind directed to other ends. As intimately as it penetrated the ideal, so now does it probe into life, and we may be certain that already there are

boys who are growing critical of the new gods in literature, and who will in their turn lead another reaction. After the swing from poetic beauty to realism, the new reaction will not, we think, be back to the old, but rather away from both. It will be less, we surmise, the literature of imagination or realism than the literature of intellect. It will all be for the enriching of the Irish mind.

'Meanwhile we congratulate Sean O'Casey on his new international repute, and we are certain that the success he won in London with Juno and the Paycock will be repeated in the United States, though it may puzzle the lovers of Irish literature there and they are many to recognize the Irish genius in its new avatar as realist. We are not great readers of our own writers, and few people in Ireland realize the respect created for the Irish intellect by writers like William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, J. M. Synge, George Moore, James Joyce, Sean O'Casey, Standish O'Grady, James Stephens, Lady Gregory, Lennox Robinson, Lord Dunsany, Douglas Hyde, and others, some of whose works are famous in three continents, and are studied in Japan and India as in Europe and America. They are about the only thing for which we have repute at present, but we hope that within a few years a revival of our economic life will make another repute for us in which the average man here may take more delight.'

A WORDSWORTH FIND

THE original manuscript of Wordsworth's 'Prelude' has been discovered, according to the Manchester Guardian, and is about to be published with annotations by Professor Ernest de

Sélincourt, the editor of Spenser and Keats. As everyone knows, this was the poem in which, writing between 1798 and 1805, Wordsworth described for the benefit of his friend Coleridge the progress of his poetic growth, and which he read to Coleridge when he returned from Malta in the latter year. The 'Prelude,' however, was on Wordsworth's direction not published until after his death forty-five years later, and in the meanwhile he was constantly engaged on revising and expanding it. As the seven years mentioned were the great years of Wordsworth's poetic exuberance, and as most of the period that followed was marked by a decline in inspiration, if not in meditation, this early draft is certain to be of enormous interest to students and lovers of the poet.

A STATUE OF AN ACTRESS

PARIS, like most European capitals, is full of statues of illustrious figures of many types, — from great generals to great scientists, but so far as we know there is not yet any monument of the sort to a great actress. At the moment a committee of Parisians has been discussing the possibility of erecting a statue of Sarah Bernhardt, and the Municipal Council has accepted its suggestion to place the statue in the Place Malsherbes in front of the Banque de France. No great hostility has been shown to the idea, but several writers have pointed out that, whatever honor may be owing to a player, at least as much is due to the dramatist who makes his or her triumphs possible. Racine, for instance, has nothing but a miserable medallion at the Comédie Française, whereas Sarah has already a theatre named after her. Who first conceived the rôle of Phèdre, after all?

Mape, by André Maurois. Translated by Eric Sutton. London: John Lane; New York: D. Appleton and Company. $2.50.

[Daily Telegraph]

WHAT, or where, is Mape? In a fanciful introduction to these three studies of typical Mapians M. Maurois explains its meaning. Mape is the country of the imagination to which we all love to escape when the outside world becomes unfriendly; it is the city of refuge, where we hope to find all our dreams come true. It is the fairyland of children, and the home of genius no less; indeed, it is its very hospitality to both extremes that fills us with the haunting doubt that perhaps genius may be a little childish after all. M. Maurois gives three sketches of this world of make-believe, employing for his purpose that attractive combination of fact and fiction which he used so fascinatingly in Ariel, his ironic resetting of the story of Shelley's life.

The first citizen of Mape is Goethe, who is revealed to us as a raw youth, as yet unpractised in life and literature, finding in his first love, Lotte, the material for his first book, The Sorrows of Werther. Here is the creative Mapian, who takes his characters from real life, varies the actual incidents with a spice of fiction, and ends by giving dire offense to the subjects of his art of make-believe. In the second study the Mapian is, not a writer, but a reader. An erotic adolescent, steeped in Balzac, finds himself in a situation closely resembling one of Balzac's own invention. Forthwith he imagines himself the Balzacian hero, and upsets the entire balance of his life by imitating and assimilating a scene from fiction. The last and strongest of the stories shows the Mapian temperament in the person of an artistic interpreter, an actress who finds relief from her own emotions by expressing them in public. The actress is Mrs. Siddons, of whose dramatic genius M. Maurois holds but a low opinion. Her early appearances are unconvincing, and it is only her beauty that enables her to win her way. But, when the sufferings of her daughters, under the pangs of despised love, wring her heart, she finds the inspiration that her nature lacks, and in a burst of passionate tears confesses that she had never acted so well before. M. Maurois has the delicate touch of the French artist, an exquisite sensibility to form, and a shadowy irony that lends piquancy to senti

ment. That talented translator, Mr. Eric Sutton, does capable justice to the refinements of the original.

My Life As an Explorer, by Sven Hedin. London: Cassell's; New York: Boni and Liveright. $5.00.

MR. SVEN HEDIN's autobiography describes more than thirty astonishing years of exploration and adventure down to the end of the war, which made him a fervent partisan and camp-mate of the Germans and the Turks. Since then he has been round the world like a common tourist, and he suggests that he may be moved to set down his impressions of the United States. They would be as vivid as everything he writes, for he is as definite as a German, yet as susceptible as a Latin. It seems likely that America has left a stronger mark on him than he knows, for he tells his long tale without flagging in a manner like the accentuated staccato of typewriters and the epitomizing rapidity of the cinema. For the reader this method is excellent; it enables the author to get into a single volume of breathless movement an immense range of scene and incident. Mr. Sven Hedin's career has been an epic of vigor and peril, and he knows how to make the most of it. After all, this Swede, though he likes to call attention to all the feathers in his cap, is, in fact, the first white man who ever saw the source of the Brahmaputra and the headsprings of the Indus; he has been an Ulysses among seas of sand; and he has played with death.

For geographers who have read in massive sequence our traveler's full account of his separate journeys there is nothing new in these pages. But they will enable the general reader for the first time to follow the whole crowded pageant of a life both brave and intellectual. Mr. Sven Hedin was first seized by the dream of polar discovery. Then he gave himself to a task very different, but as dangerous the exploration of the half-known heart of the largest and strangest of continents. He has traversed the wildernesses of Turkestan, Mongolia, and Tibet; amid the sands he has been nearly at his last gasp for water; he has crossed and recrossed the Himalayas and made far more connected and definite our knowledge of the tremendous Trans-Himalayan chain. His part in the Great War was more