16th, and will last ten weeks, during which fifty performances only will be given, Wednesdays being left free as heretofore.

The prices in the summer season range from £7 7s. and £6 6s. for a grand-tier box to 10s. 6d. for an amphitheatre stall; the intermediate prices being £4 4s., £3 35., £2 12s. 6d., £1 Is., for an orchestral stall, and 15s. for a balcony stall. The gallery seats are 2s. 6d.

CHAPTER XV.

THE THEATRES.

I would be idle to speculate as to the influence (in a moral sense) exercised by the Theatre upon the many thousands who now look to it as a principal source of recreation. Any such inquiry, interesting as it might be, does not fit with the purpose of this book. The final answer to all that might be urged on one side or the other, in considering the question,

would probably be, that at no period in the history of the stage has the Theatre been

so popular as it is to-day

in England.

In point of fact, the

Theatre has become one

of the most important institutions of our social life. Its affairs were never so closely scanned on every side as they now are in London. The County Council looks with vigilant eye upon the work of the architect who plans and the builder who builds the theatre. The Lord Chamberlain's office still exercises the right of official censorship in respect of the Plays to be produced on its stage. Theatre

managers never before incurred such pecuniary risks

in order to satisfy the tastes of their patrons. Dramatic authors are more keenly alive than ever to the very considerable material

advantages to be secured from producing a good play. And actors and actresses are now become so important personages in the public estimation, that they bid fair presently to oust meaner citizens of the nether world of Literature, Science, and the rest, from all chance of entering the waiting-rooms of the more distinguished among us.

Were Dr. Johnson alive to-day, he might have found less reason for feeling dissatisfied with the kind of reception he met with from Lord Chesterfield the great. But then we, on the other hand, should have been the losers by that celebrated letter, one sentence of which, as we remember it, ran thus: "I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself." Fortune certainly lavishes its favours upon the London stage, and enables those who appear upon it to do a good deal for themselves, however else may flout other people.

it

The subject we have touched upon has frequently engaged the passing attention of far more competent authority than we profess to be. Mr. Irving has now and again favoured us with his views upon it, every way entitled to consideration. Only recently he felt "more encouraged than he could express, for the future of the art which he loved, when he saw the great number of young recruits daily joining its ranks from the great body of the more highly-educated classes." And though he might be too sanguine, "he could not share the lugubrious views so freely expressed by certain modern writers with regard either to the present or the future of the English stage."

Various other persons, dramatists, critics, managers, actresses, actors, dignitaries and others of church and state, in print or otherwise, have delivered their views. And, occasionally, an occupant of "Pit," or "Gallery," moved thereto by some passing incident of the play represented, spontaneously, with uplifted voice, in the theatre itself, has given utterance to his: and, on