It is no part of this paper to describe the innocently absurd and good-naturedly extravagant things which Gautier and his companions did, not alone the first night of Hernani, but at all times and in all places. They unquestionably saw to it that Victor Hugo had fair play the evening of February 25, 1830. The occasion was a historic one, and they with their Merovingian hair, their beards, their waistcoats, and their enthusiasm helped to make it an unusually lively and picturesque occasion.

I have quoted a very few of the good things which one may read in Gautier's Histoire du Romantisme. The narrative is one of much sweetness and humor. It ought to be translated for the benefit of readers who know Gautier chiefly by Mademoiselle de Maupin, and that for reasons among which love of literature is perhaps the least influential.

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It is pleasant to find that Renduel confirms the popular view of Gautier's character. M. Jullien says that Renduel never spoke of Gautier but in praise. "Quel bon garçon!" he used to say. Quel brave cœur!" M. Jullien has naturally no large number of new facts to give concerning Gautier. But there are eight or nine letters from Gautier to Renduel which will be read with pleasure, especially the one in which the poet says to the publisher, "Heaven preserve you from historical novels, and your eldest child from the smallpox."

Gautier must have been both generous and modest. No mere egoist could

have been so faithful in his hero-worship or so unpretentious in his allusions to himself. One has only to read the most superficial accounts of French literature to learn how universally it is granted that Gautier had skillful command of that language to which he was born. Yet he himself was by no means sure that he deserved a master's degree. He quotes one of Goethe's sayings, -a saying in which the great German poet declares that after the practice of many arts there was but one art in which he could be said to excel, namely, the art of writing in German; in that he was almost a master. Then Gautier exclaims, "Would that we, after so many years of labor, had become almost a master of the art of writing in French! But such ambitions are not for us!"

Yet they were for him; and it is a satisfaction to note how invariably he is accounted, by the artists in literature, an eminent man among many eminent men in whose touch language was plastic. Leon H. Vincent

A MATINÉE PERFORMANCE. It was Saturday afternoon, and the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet was about to be performed. For an elderly per son like myself the situation was strange enough. Rows on rows of young girls in their new spring dresses filled the theatre, blondes and brunettes, city girls and suburban girls, with a sprinkling of country cousins. Hardly a male form dared to show itself in the orchestra chairs, and the average age of the whole audience could scarcely have exceeded nineteen years. Four "pigtails" depended immediately in front of me, and at the head of their wearers sat a noble maiden, a chaperon for the nonce, tall and beautifully formed, with brows such as Joan of Arc might have had, -more robust than Juliet, not quite so passionate, but fit to be the mother of heroes.

How grave the youthful audience was! I confess that I felt almost like an inter

loper at some sacred ceremony. These girls knew what they were about: they were drawn hither by Nature herself; they knew that the business in hand was the chief business of their lives. Love and marriage! Pedagogues and parents might prate about books and accomplishments, about music and culture, the art class and Radcliffe College; but the owner of the shortest pigtail there knew in her secret heart that Juliet and Juliet's experience were of more moment to her than all the learning of the schools. And she was right. At twenty, and thereabout, the romance of life is duly appreciated; at twenty-five or thirty, the man, not the woman, begins to think that the world has something of more value and importance in store for him; but when he has quaffed the cup of life to the bottom, he realizes that the first taste was the best.

Up rose the curtain, and disclosed the Romeo and the Juliet of the occasion. No need for paint or padding here! There stood the immortal lovers, young and beautiful, as Shakespeare himself might have imagined them. The audience gasped simultaneously. What a voice Juliet had! — rich, full, young, but with such a melancholy ring in it that every word she spoke presaged the end. Well might she say,

"O God, I have an ill-divining soul!"

A tear quivered in the young chaperon's eye as these words dropped like pearls from Juliet's lips. What better school for a girl could there be than that which Shakespeare keeps? Even Juliet, with all her youthful passion, in spite of her scant fourteen years, has a true woman's sense of what is right and fitting. There are no lines in the whole play more touching than those with which she takes leave of Romeo on that first night:

"Although I joy in thee,

I have no joy of this contract to-night;
It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say, 'It lightens.' Sweet, good-
night!"

Between the acts I felt the strangeness of my situation most acutely, so difficult were the questions put to me. The fact is I have had no opportunity to mention it till now I had been sent to the theatre as escort for a girl from the country, no older than Juliet; a tall, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired Anglo-Saxon maiden, the beauty of a village which lies among the hills of remote New England, fourteen miles from a railroad. Sad was the havoc wrought in her acute but untutored mind by the scenic representation of Romeo and Juliet. At an early period in the play, she wisely conjectured that "Romeo's folks could n't get on with Juliet's folks." And it was easy for me to reply that she was quite right. But later, after Romeo had been banished from Verona for killing Tybalt, what was I to say, when she inquired with the utmost seriousness, "Was it wrong for Romeo to kill Tybalt?" God knows. Fourteen years of study and thought at

a German university would not have enabled me to answer the question, and here was I called upon to settle it offhand! The feudal system, chivalry, the duel, the theory of Honor, and its relation to ethics and to Christianity, a few trifling matters like these had first to be disposed of before I could pronounce upon Romeo's conduct. I hesitated, and the blue eyes of rustic Juliet beside me dilated with astonishment. The question was a simple one, as it seemed to her; why could not I, a person, like Friar Laurence, of "long-experienced time," give it a simple answer? At last I replied, with the awkwardness of conscious ignorance, "I don't know, but the Prince thought he was wrong." The answer was not satisfactory, and she turned away with a sigh, as if for the first time it occurred to her that perhaps life was more complex than it appeared as she had been wont to view it from her home in North Jay.

As the play progressed and the tragedy began to deepen, a kind of awe settled down upon the youthful audience, now sitting almost in darkness, for the lights had been extinguished. The pigtails within my view hung tense and rigid, and my young companion frowned, as she endeavored to follow the working of Juliet's mind.

There is a beautiful simplicity, an utter absence of affectation or self-consciousness, in Juliet's declaration of what she would rather do than be false to Romeo. An answering fire kindled in the eyes of the youthful chaperon, and the four pigtails in the same row trembled with horror when the climax was reached in these lines :

"Or bid me go into a new-made grave

And hide me with a dead man in his shroud; Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble;

And I will do it without fear or doubt,
To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love."

But Juliet was capable not only of courageous action, but of despair; and

"Give me some present counsel, or, behold, 'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that Which the commission of thy years and art Could to no issue of true honour bring."

There lies the moral of the story. Mercutio, Tybalt, Paris, Romeo, and Juliet, all young and vigorous persons, with the world before them, preferred "true honour" to life. But Juliet had the hardest part to play. It is probable that Shakespeare in his modesty never dreamed that the words which he puts in the mouth of Montague would come true of himself: "For I will raise her statue in pure gold;

That while Verona by that name is known,
There shall no figure at such rate be set
As that of true and faithful Juliet."

The audience passed demurely out, after the horrors of the final scene, with a gentle rustle of silken skirts. Outside, the sun still rode high in heaven, and the bells on the electric cars still profaned the air; but the spell which the great poet had cast over the witnesses of the tragedy shut out the light of common day even to my elderly perceptions - till night had fallen.