every profession human ingenuity is racked to
the utmost to satisfy the fastidiousness of a
critical public, we have a right to require that
the stage machinist shall not lag behind in the
universal struggle after perfection.

Now, as far as this country is concerned, it
must be reluctantly confessed that stage
machinery has hitherto not advanced as other
things have advanced; and it is, therefore, with
the greater satisfaction that we now put it on
record that at length a plan for working the
machinery of the stage, the efficaciousness of
which has been for years tested at the principal
Parisian theatres, has at length found its way
(with improvements suggested by experience)
over here, where it seems more than probable
that it will speedily become naturalised. The
light of modern civilisation has at last even
found its way "behind the scenes." The Spirit
of Progress, a fairy, doubtless, properly attired
in muslin and spangles, has descended on a
certain stage not far from Wellington-street, Strand,
and with one wave of her glittering wand has
inaugurated a new system whose laws are
dictated by Reason and Common Sense, banishing
such an accumulation of obstructive conventional
rubbish, that one would expect the price
of firewood to be lower for months to come.

In plain English, MR. FECHTER has recently
caused to be constructed in Great Britain, and
out of materials supplied by the British timber-
merchant, a stage upon a principle entirely
different from any previously tried in this
country. It is a most ingenious piece of
mechanism, which astonishes you first by its
apparent intricacy, and then as you pass from the
examination of its various parts to the consideration
of it as a whole, by its singular unity
and simplicity.

As it is probable that the great proportion of
the public will see nothing of this stage except
the effects to be produced upon it, and will have
no knowledge of the machinery by which those
results are brought about, perhaps some attempt
to describe it, and the manner of its working,
will not be uninteresting.

The proscenium, and the row of foot-lights,
technically called the "float," divide the audience
part of a theatre from what may be called the
actors' part. Supposing that region appropriated
to spectators to be in its ordinary
state, and supposing that other region behind
the proscenium to be entirely empty of all
fittings, gutted of stage, of scenery, and of the
mechanical contrivances thereto belonging—
supposing this condition of affairs, the spectator,
sitting we will say in the dress circle, would see
on the other side of the proscenium, a vast
empty space bounded by bare walls, and he
would observe, that besides being much larger
in its area and extent than the audience part of
the house, it was excavated downward to a
depth considerably exceeding that of the floor
of the stalls, while in the matter of height, he
would remark that this enormous empty
enclosure rose to a much greater altitude than the
ceiling on the public side of the proscenium.

It is in this great empty enclosure that the
manager of the Lyceum Theatre has caused to
be placed a certain huge and complicated
structure, which entirely fills the whole space at
command, yet which has all been put together in small
separate parts; and just as it has been fitted
together like the pieces in a child's puzzle, so it
could be taken to pieces again, and removed with
perfect ease, did occasion require it. Of this
structure, of course for all practical purposes the
principal part is the "Stage." All that surrounds that,
is subservient to it, and made to minister to it.
It extends from side to side, and from end to
end, of what we have called the actors' part of
the theatre, and is supported by vertical pillars
of timber descending to the foundations. Beneath
the stage is another stage, at a distance of about
seven feet, and beneath this again, at about the
same distance, is the lowest floor of the theatre,
or in other words the excavated ground. A
great many of the effects which are got upon
the stage, require this depth for their development.
It is, however, between the first and
second stages, between the real stage on which
the play is acted, and the second stage, that the
more important part of the machinery for working
the scenes is to be found. This is, indeed, a
very busy place, and reminds one forcibly of the
"between-decks" on board ship; and here it
may be remarked that all the arrangements
connected with this new stage and its appliances,
do continually remind one of a ship, and that
but for the blessed circumstance that there is
no rolling or pitching, one might almost
believe, in going over the structure we are
describing, that one really was enclosed within
some of the wooden walls of old England.
Here, are windlasses, pulleys, ropes, companion-
ladders, at every turn; and the facilities afforded
for knocking, first your hat, and then your head,
off, serve to carry out the illusion in a manner
that is truly marvellous.

We must keep at present to the main-deck—
the stage that is visible to the public when a
play is acted. The first thing that strikes you
in examining this, is, that it is traversed
completely from side to side by certain narrow slits,
through which you can see down into the second
stage below. There are two dozen of these
slits in parallel lines. Having observed them,
and wondered what they are for, you notice a
number of strong upright poles rising out of
the stage, where the wings are ordinarily placed;
going up to one of them you see, on examination,
that though it is a pole above the stage, it has a
broader lower member—part and parcel of it
—which descends through one of those slits
already described, into the "between-decks"
below. Descending a companion-ladder, you
post off to see what becomes of it after it has
passed through the slit, and then one glance
reveals the simple plan by which the scenes are
pushed backwards or forwards to their positions
on the stage. That broad flat piece is received
in a travelling crane below, which runs on
wheels along an iron tramway, and moves so
easily that a child might move it with but