the reform of the stage method of declamation, which had previously been of a very pompous kind.  Following his counsels, Mdlle.  Clairon, the famous tragic actress, had ventured to play Roxana, in the Court Theatre at Versailles, “dressed in the habit of a Sultana, without hoop, her arms half naked, and in the truth of Oriental costume.”  With this attire she adopted a simpler kind of elocution.  Her success was most complete.  Marmontel was profuse in his congratulations.  “But it will ruin me,” said the actress.  “Natural declamation requires correctness of costume.  My wardrobe is from this moment useless to me; I lose twelve hundred guineas’ worth of dresses!  However, the sacrifice is made.  Within a week you shall see me play Electra after nature, as I have just played Roxana.”  Marmontel writes:  “From that time all the actors were obliged to abandon their fringed gloves, their voluminous wigs, their feathered hats, and all the fantastic paraphernalia that had so long shocked the sight of all men of taste.  Lekain himself followed the example of Mdlle.  Clairon, and, from that moment, their talents thus perfected, excited mutual emulation and were worthy rivals of each other.”

Upon the English stage reform in this matter was certainly a matter of slow growth.  A German gentleman, Christian Augustus Gottlieb Goede by name, who published, in 1821, a long account of a visit he had recently made to England, expresses in strong terms his opinions on certain peculiarities of its theatre.  “You will never behold,” he writes, “foreign actors dressed in such an absurd style as upon the London stage.  The English, of all other nations the most superstitious worshippers of fashion, are, nevertheless, accustomed to manifest a strange indulgence for the incivilities which this goddess encounters from their performers.  I have seen Mr. Cooke personating the character of Sir Pertinax McSycophant in ‘The Man of the World,’ in a buff coat of antique cut, and an embroidered waistcoat which might have figured in the court of Charles II.; though this play is of modern date and the actor must of course have been familiar with the current costume.  In ‘The Way to Keep Him,’ Mr. C. Kemble acted the part of Sir Brilliant Fashion, a name which ought to have suggested to him a proper style of dress, in a frock absolutely threadbare, an obsolete doublet, long pantaloons, a prodigious watch-chain of steel, and a huge incroyable under his arm.  This last article, indeed, was an appendage of 1802, but all the rest presented a genuine portrait of an indigent and coxcombical journeyman tailor.  He must have known that pantaloons and an incroyable rumpled and folded together are incongruous articles of apparel—­that no gentleman, much less Sir Brilliant Fashion, would make his appearance in a threadbare coat; and that steel watch-chains, as the chronicles of the Birmingham manufactories plainly evince, have been out of date these fourscore years.  Neither would he, I am perfectly convinced, parade in such a costume off the boards of the theatre.  Why then should he choose to exhibit such a whimsical figure upon them?  May I venture to offer my own conjecture on the subject?  The real cause probably is that an absurd costume is perfectly fashionable upon the English stage!”