We do not expect a cripple to run fast. When
we can get nothing better to amuse us than a
rattle, one rattle is as good as another. It is not
worth while seriously to criticise the construction
of a toy.

Glance at the other arts, and see if they have
not greatly outrun the art of the drama. Take
literature. We have among us, poets, historians,
novelists, political and social essayists, whose
works are equal, nay, in some cases, and in
many respects, superior, to the best works of
any past age of glory to which the optimist can
point. Placed as we are at a disadvantage in a
late period of time, when the mines of original
thought are nearly, if not wholly, exhausted, the
art of giving expression to true sentiments and
sound thought, in good strong nervous English,
has been cultivated in our day to the highest
state of perfection. Essays that would have
made a writer of the last century famous for all
time, are lavished day after day, and week after
week, upon newspapers and reviews, which are
tossed aside the moment they are read. The
great and rapid advance of every-day literature
during the last ten years is one of the most
marked features of our time.

This healthy growth and rapid development
of the literary art is in part to be traced
to the removal of an unnatural and vexatious
restriction, that restriction being the paper duty.
Since that impost was removed, readers have
largely multiplied, and writers have multiplied.
General literature has improved, because it has
been relieved from trammels, and has been
permitted to develop itself in a natural way.

Take, in the next place, the art of the painter.
Amid much that is eccentric and experimental,
we see an amount of general excellence, which
we look for in vain in past times. At the
beginning of the present century, nay, even so late
as the time of the Reform Bill, the walls of the
Royal Academy were covered with daubs which
would not now be honoured with a place on
the stairs. There were a few men, about as
many as you could count on the fingers of one
hand, who were known to the public as great
painters, and who had earned a title to be so
regarded. The ruck were mere daubsters, who
could neither draw nor paint. But now in the
present day we have many painters who are
worthy to be called great, while the common
run of the craft has reached a high level of
excellence, both in drawing and colouring. When
we criticise the pictures in the Royal Academy
now-a-days, we do so from the highest
standpoint. Among the hundreds of pictures which
adorn the walls, there are not, perhaps, twenty
which fall short in the primary requirements of
art. Imagination, poetical feeling, power, may
be wanting; but the art of the draughtsman
and the colourist is there at a hundred fingers'
ends.

And here, again, the causes are the absence of
all restriction; entire freedom to take advantage
of the progress of the age; the opportunities
afforded to bring art to the doors of the people.
Most of the great pictures of the present era
have been exhibited to the people in all parts of
the country. In this way some taste for true art
has been spread abroad even among the humblest
in the land; and the result is, that while rich
persons give orders for paintings, the poor
indulge a like taste, so far as their means will
allow, with the best woodcuts and engravings.
In this way artists are stimulated to put forth
their best efforts, and the great demand for their
works bears its natural fruit in a liberal reward.
What may be called the art of science, has
made, and is still making, marvellous progress
among us, and this is due to the force of
knowledge and inquiry, stimulated by the urgent
requirements of a people becoming day by day
more intellectual, more refined, and more
prosperous: consequently less and less disposed to
tolerate anything that is rude, clumsy, and
inadequate to its purpose.

Every art is making progress, except the
dramatic art. If we buy a book or a newspaper,
it is because it is good of its kind. If we buy
a picture, it is because it is a good picture, or
because it pleases us; and we give more or less
money for it, according as we estimate its value
or its power to please. If we buy a chair, we
want something more than a rude construction
of wood to sit down upon; we want also
shape, elegance of design, colour, ornament. It
is only when we go to the theatre that we take
any drama that is offered to us and pay the same
price for it, whether it be good or bad. In every
other department of art we must have
something near perfection; but in the drama we are
content with a makeshift.

In the course of twenty years, while the population
has been rapidly increasing, while the means
of communication have been extending in all
directions, bringing many thousands of persons
into London every day, while books and papers
have been multiplying by millions, while wealth
has been accumulating, and while the necessity
for recreation has become more urgent, in
consequence of the stress of labour which busy
times impose upon the population, not a single
new theatre has been built in London! At the
west end of the town, the number of theatres
is the same to-day as it was thirty years ago.
Churches, schools, libraries, institutions,
museums, music-halls, have multiplied. The theatre
alone remains in statu quo. Naturally, this state
of things has afforded no new scope for the
dramatist; and the managers of theatres, secure
in what is practically a monopoly, make the
public take what they please to give them.
Hence translations from the French, which
cost little or nothing for authorship. The
mischief which has been done by this filching from
our neighbours is infinite. By lowering the
price paid for dramatic work to the mere wages
of a translator, it has driven capable English
authors out of the dramatic field; it has accustomed
the translators, whom we regard as our
dramatic authors (or who, at any rate, regard
themselves in that light), to believe, or to
proceed upon the belief, that the English have no
talent for dramatic construction, and that it is