with all that part of life which the conventions were intended to hide from us.  We see a world where people are very vicious and very unhappy; a sordid, miserable world which it is as well sometimes to consider.  It is a side of existence which exists; and to see it is not to be attracted towards it.  It is a grey and sordid land, under the sway of “Eros vanne”; it is, for the most part, weary of itself, without rest, and without escape.  This is Yvette Guilbert’s domain; she sings it, as no one has ever sung it before, with a tragic realism, touched with a sort of grotesque irony, which is a new thing on any stage.  The rouleuse of the Quartier Breda, praying to the one saint in her calendar, “Sainte Galette”; the soularde, whom the urchins follow and throw stones at in the street; the whole life of the slums and the gutter:  these are her subjects, and she brings them, by some marvellous fineness of treatment, into the sphere of art.

It is all a question of metier, no doubt, though how far her method is conscious and deliberate it is difficult to say.  But she has certain quite obvious qualities, of reticence, of moderation, of suspended emphasis, which can scarcely be other than conscious and deliberate.  She uses but few gestures, and these brief, staccato, and for an immediate purpose; her hands, in their long black gloves, are almost motionless, the arms hang limply; and yet every line of the face and body seems alive, alive and repressed.  Her voice can be harsh or sweet, as she would have it, can laugh or cry, be menacing or caressing; it is never used for its own sake, decoratively, but for a purpose, for an effect.  And how every word tells!  Every word comes to you clearly, carrying exactly its meaning; and, somehow, along with the words, an emotion, which you may resolve to ignore, but which will seize upon you, which will go through and through you.  Trick or instinct, there it is, the power to make you feel intensely; and that is precisely the final test of a great dramatic artist.

SIR HENRY IRVING

As I watched, at the Lyceum, the sad and eager face of Duse, leaning forward out of a box, and gazing at the eager and gentle face of Irving, I could not help contrasting the two kinds of acting summed up in those two faces.  The play was “Olivia,” W.G.  Wills’ poor and stagey version of “The Vicar of Wakefield,” in which, however, not even the lean intelligence of a modern playwright could quite banish the homely and gracious and tender charm of Goldsmith.  As Dr. Primrose, Irving was almost at his best; that is to say, not at his greatest, but at his most equable level of good acting.  All his distinction was there, his nobility, his restraint, his fine convention.  For Irving represents the old school of acting, just as Duse represents the new school.  To Duse, acting is a thing almost wholly apart from action; she thinks on the stage, scarcely