of the operas was most excellent, and I have never seen better lighting effects than on the Brunswick stage, and this, too, was all done by gas, incandescent electric light not then being dreamed of even.  I had imagined in my simplicity that effects were far easier to produce on the modern stage since the introduction of electric light.  Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, than whom there can be no greater authority, tells me that this is not so.  To my surprise, he declares that electric light is too crude and white, and that it destroys all illusion.  He informs me that it is impossible to obtain a convincing moonlight effect with electricity, or to give a sense of atmosphere.  Gas-light was yellow, and colour-effects were obtained by dropping thin screens of coloured silk over the gas-battens in the flies.  This diffused the light, which a crude blue or red electric bulb does not do.  Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson astonished me by telling me that Henry Irving always refused to have electric light on the stage at the Lyceum, though he had it in the auditorium.  All those marvellous and complicated effects, which old playgoers must well recollect in Irving’s Lyceum productions, were obtained with gas.  I remember the lovely sunset, with its after-glow fading slowly into night, in the garden scene of the Lyceum version of Faust, and this was all done with gas.  The factor of safety is another matter.  With rows of flaming gas-battens in the flies, however carefully screened off, and another row of “gas lengths” in the wings, and flaring “ground-rows” in close proximity to highly inflammable painted canvas, the inevitable destiny of a gas-lit theatre is only a question of time.  The London theatres of the “sixties” all had a smell of mingled gas and orange-peel, which I thought delicious.

Mr. Spiegelberg most sensibly suggested that as I was absolutely ignorant of German, the easiest manner in which I could accustom my ears to the sound of the language would be to take an abonnement at the theatre, and to go there nightly.  So for the modest sum of thirty shillings per month, I found myself entitled to a stall in the second row, with the right of seeing thirty performances a month.  I went every night to the theatre, and there was no monotony about it, for the same performance was never repeated twice in one month.  I have seen, I think, every opera ever written, and every single one of Shakespeare’s tragedies.  A curious trait in the German character is petty vindictiveness.  A certain Herr Behrens had signed a contract as principal bass with the Brunswick management.  Getting a far more lucrative offer from Vienna, the prudent Behrens had paid a fine, and thrown over the Brunswick theatre.  For eighteen months the unfortunate man was pilloried every night on the theatre programmes.  Every play-bill had printed on it in large letters, “Kontrakt-bruchig Herr Behrens,” never allowing the audience to forget that poor Behrens was a convicted “contract-breaker.”