to add a more deserved fiasco at any theatre than when he produced at the Adelphi his ill-fated drama of "Love and Riches."

To combine literary excellence with stage-craft is a rarity, but we maintain in spite of adverse croakings, that we have men amongst us at the present time who have proved unmistakably by their work that the possession of both gifts is by no means an impossibility.

It may be said "Yes-but you have only mentioned three names— Grundy, Jones, Pinero, hardly a lengthy list wherewith to prove your point!"

Our answer would be that we have designedly selected these three names as being essentially representative, though there is no need for us to stop, as though we had exhausted the number.

We have taken Pinero as the brilliant satirist of the stage, and when we read and witness his works together with those of Grundy, the kindly cynic, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that we have something not far distant from the genius that gives us a peep into "Vanity Fair."

Henry Arthur Jones, by his realistic studies of modern English life, comes at times within a measurable distance of the pen which gave to the world a "Middlemarch and an "Adam Bede."

Then again we surely owe a debt of gratitude to Robert Buchanan for his masterly dramatization of Fielding, and we deny that we are guilty of hyperbole if we venture to express our belief that his skilful treatment of Tom Jones" (under the attractive title of "Sophia") will hold the stage for years to come as a masterpiece and a classic.

Sims of late has not appeared so much as a dramatist, being a man who in his time plays many parts, of which journalist and philanthropist are not the least prominent and exacting.

When, however, he has treated play-goers to characteristic melodrama, he has shown by his intimate acquaintance with the seamy side of life, and his sympathy for the poor and suffering, that he is entitled no less than was Charles Dickens to be emphatically considered in spirit and in purpose as an "Apostle of the People "

His plays are replete with natural touches of homely pathos and kindly wit, and had the "Lights of London" (so inseparably associated with the brightest days of the Princess's) been his only play, he would by this alone have justified his claim to rank as both a successful playwright and a clever and fascinating writer.

There are coming men besides-to wit a Malcom Watson and a Haddon Chambers-the one deserving the most unstinted praise for his singularly impressive and emotional play entitled the "Pharisee," and the other achieving no mean reputation at an early age by his " Idler," and his "Captain Swift."

We are most of us, however, only too apt to disparage the days in which our lot is cast, and this is especially the case so far as artistic matters are concerned.

Just now, however, the least sanguine may look forward with some degree of interest to the forthcoming comedy of the Poet Laureate who has based his scenario on the fanciful legend of "Maid Marian."

In this instance he has with commendable prudence called in the collaboration of that master of stage technique-Augustin Daly-feeling doubtless that his former plays (notably his "Promise of May ") hardly displayed the practical acquaintance with the conditions of the theatre which is so essential a requisite to complete success.

If the poet then is not necessarily endued with the instinctive methods of the play-wright, we may at least console ourselves with the fact that we still have play-wrights who are not wanting in poetic grace and feeling-notably Herman Merivale and W. G. Wills.

Who can forget the noble beauty of the former's "White Pilgrim," or the sympathetic charm of the latter's "Charles I."?

To tell us then that literature is divorced from the drama of to-day is to frame an indictment that can neither fairly nor logically be sustained. It deserves as a consequence to be quashed, and the amusing part is that the very critics who prefer the charge tell us with amazing confidence to turn to another land, if we would see the welcome light dawn upon our benighted literature and our well nigh hopeless art.

The Norwegian Ibsen is, forsooth, held up to us as an idol and we are seriously and earnestly invited to regard him as the nonpareil in literary skill, and as deserving of all that is laudatory by reason of his subtle analysis of character and his grasp of dramatic construction.

But the fact-stubborn as facts proverbially are-remains that Ibsen is as dead as a door nail-for his plays have been impartially tried and indisputably found wanting. His "Ghosts" have vanished into the region of forgotten things and his "Doll's House" has been knocked to pieces and no one so far seems anxious to build it up again.

Almost simultaneously with this collapse have the frantic efforts of the Managers and Promoters of the so called "Independent" Theatre to revive an interest in Zola's Works (notably by the recent production of Thérèse Raquin) proved equally disastrous.

In neither the one nor the other do we discover the smallest trace of "literature," but we do find, interspersed with here and there a powerful situation, depressingly morbid studies of misshapen character and distorted aspects of the darker and less cleanly side of human life.

To emphasize such to the exclusion of all else is neither wise nor artistic, and we are content to believe that, amongst our own writers, there are not wanting men of wider sympathies and larger intellects who realize that the claims of literature may be identical with the best and highest interests of the stage.

To such we may safely entrust the welfare of our country's drama, believing, and with reason for believing, that we, as Englishmen, if sometimes classified as vulgarly materialistic in our ideals, do in the main appreciate the good work of those who are daily striving with loyal zeal to raise the Theatre in the estimation not only of play-goers but of literary students. Let then the pessimist have his say-for it cannot injure him, nor cannot it influence us.

We are proud of the past of our dramatic history-we are grateful for the achievements of the present, and we are hopeful for the future. In this age of feverish activity the Theatre has become a necessityas a means of indispensable recreation.

It is no longer a luxury-but in whatever light it may be viewed it is beyond all doubt an institution that claims alike, as regards the author and the actor, our sympathetic support, which we can hardly be said to accord if we give heed to the petulant pessimist or listen for a moment to the cynical croakings of captious critics.

JOHN HOLT.

SICILIAN SKETCHES, IV.

THOUGH the softness of the climate, and the natural loveliness of Sicily, have not changed with the flight of ages, yet-setting aside Palermo-the beauty for which the island towns and cities were once famous, seems to have left them for ever.

Hard indeed is it to recognise in the dirty collection of hovels and decayed churches now known as Girgenti, the proud Acragas that Pindar calls "the most beautiful city of mortals."- For over a hundred years Acragas stood in the foremost rank among those licentious and magnificent Greek States, which set up their splendid tyrannies and blazed in the war-like world of the times, as if their power would last for ever. Humbled and razed to the ground by Carthage, the city was not restored to its ancient splendour, until Timoleon arose many years after, and modelled the state anew under the name of Agrigentum. But the Second Punic War saw the final extinction of its independence. The brief spell of prosperity under Saracen rule, soon passed away when the town was taken by a Christian Monarch, and since that epoch, Girgenti has languished through the centuries with no hope of better days to come.

As usual, there are traces of massive city walls extending through the vineyards and olive groves for miles. The old Acragas sloped down the hill on the sea side, and was guarded by wonderful forts and defensive works. Below the great walls is a yellow cliff, and then comes a stretch of pleasant meadow land reaching away to the shore. Upon the rampart cliff rises up a glorious group of Greek Temples, built in the pure simple Doric of which so little remains. The rugged grandeur of their fluted columns is unimpaired by Age, and the lapse of Time has clothed their tawny sandstone with a mellow glory that goes far to hide the ravages of storm and decay.

At Girgenti, as at Postum, the feeling of sadness and desolation which comes over one, is very striking.

Of all the Gods to whom such fanes were vowed, Melancholy now alone holds sway, and she had no temple here in the olden time Nations have passed away, the busy streets and squares are sweet silent meadows, and where the smoke from a hundred sacrifices ascended with the morning dews, now rises naught but the fresh steamy smell of the wet red earth.

And yet these old temple columns still rear their impassive fronts in mute protest to the stars, the only friends of their long-dead youth that remain unchanged.

The Temples are five in number: that of Concord is one of the best preserved in existence, doubtless owing to the fact that in the middle ages it was converted into a church, of which, however, no trace is now to be seen with the exception of some extra window openings. The Temples of Juno Lacinia, of Hercules, and the lovely fragment that is all that remains of the fane devoted to the great twin brothers, Castor and Pollux, lie within a stone's throw of each other. The greatest work of all is the huge unfinished temple of Zeus, of which mention is made in the writings of Polybius and Diodorus. Its size may be gathered from the fact that a man can stand in the flutings of the columns, which measure no less than twenty feet in circumference. One of the gigantic statues of the Telamones has been reconstructed from its shattered fragments, and would stand, if re-erected, over twenty-five feet in height.

Many interesting rock tombs and Early Christian Catacombs of circular form, are scattered along the cliff, some of them still strewn with skulls and skeletons. The grand stretch of sea view seen from the temples is very lovely; the coast-line is unbroken except for the magnificent mole of Porto Empedocle, constructed by the present Government to remedy the want of a natural harbour on the southern coast of the island.

A tiresome and tedious railway journey has to be undergone in order to reach Catania, the third town in Sicily in point of importance, and ranking second in population. The line climbs the mountains, and affords wonderful glimpses now and again of sea and forest. It passes through the centre of the sulphur districts,