vulgarities with unusual success.  Those automatic gestures, flapping and flopping; that dribbling voice, without intonation; that flabby droop and twitch of the face; all that soapy rubbing-in of the expressive parts of the song:  I could see no skill in it all, of a sort worth having.  The women here sing mainly with their shoulders, for which they seem to have been chosen, and which are undoubtedly expressive.  Often they do not even take the trouble to express anything with voice or face; the face remains blank, the voice trots creakily.  It is a doll who repeats its lesson, holding itself up to be seen.

The French “revue,” as one sees it at the Folies-Bergere, done somewhat roughly and sketchily, strikes one most of all by its curious want of consecution, its entire reliance on the point of this or that scene, costume, or performer.  It has no plan, no idea; some ideas are flung into it in passing; but it remains as shapeless as an English pantomime, and not much more interesting.  Both appeal to the same undeveloped instincts, the English to a merely childish vulgarity, the French to a vulgarity which is more frankly vicious.  Really I hardly know which is to be preferred.  In England we pretend that fancy dress is all in the interests of morality; in France they make no such pretence, and, in dispensing with shoulder-straps, do but make their intentions a little clearer.  Go to the Moulin-Rouge and you will see a still clearer object-lesson.  The goods in the music-halls are displayed so to speak, behind glass, in a shop window; at the Moulin-Rouge they are on the open booths of a street market.

M. CAPUS IN ENGLAND

An excellent Parisian company from the Varietes has been playing “La Veine” of M. Alfred Capus, and this week it is playing “Les Deux Ecoles” of the same entertaining writer.  The company is led by Mme. Jeanne Granier, an actress who could not be better in her own way unless she acquired a touch of genius, and she has no genius.  She was thoroughly and consistently good, she was lifelike, amusing, never out of key; only, while she reminded one at times of Rejane, she had none of Rejane’s magnetism, none of Rejane’s exciting naturalness.

The whole company is one of excellent quality, which goes together like the different parts of a piece of machinery.  There is Mme. Marie Magnier, so admirable as an old lady of that good, easy-going, intelligent, French type.  There is Mlle. Lavalliere, with her brilliant eyes and her little canaille voice, vulgarly exquisite.  There is M. Numes, M. Guy, M. Guitry.  M. Guitry is the French equivalent of Mr. Fred Kerr, with all the difference that that change of nationality means.  His slow manner, his delaying pantomine, his hard, persistent eyes, his uninflected voice, made up a type which I have never seen more faithfully presented on the stage.  And there is M. Brasseur.  He is a