was a matter which down to the close of the last century greatly exercised the minds of university men. At the present day the impression that Oxford is the elder university is so generally prevalent that it would be vain to attempt to counteract it. Yet although Cambridge cannot boast of any colleges founded by King Alfred, and has long disregarded the fable of "Cantaber, a Spaniard, three hundred and seventy-five yeares before the birth

year 630 A.D." These schools probably were in existence at the Norman Conquest, and some authorities maintain that it was at Cambridge that William's son, Henry I., gained his well-known Cambridge that William's son, Henry I., gained his well-known sobriquet of Beauclerc. Speed tells us that "when the Normans had gotten the garland on their heads, and the Danish stormes turned into sunshine dayes, Gislebert the monk, with Odo, Tetricus, and William, in the Raigue of King Henry the First, resorted

unto this place, and in a publike Barne read the Lectures of Grammar, Logicke, and Rhetorick, and Gislebert Divinitie upon the Sabbath and Festival dayes. From this little fountain (saith Peter Blessensis) grew a great River, which made all England fruitfull, by the many Masters and Teachers proceeding out of Cambridge as out of a holy Paradise of God."

Favored alike by church and state, by the Bishops of Ely and Norwich, by Edward III. and the Black Prince, by York and Lancaster, by the sainted Henry VI. and Margaret of Anjou no less than by Elizabeth Woodville, by the strong-minded mother of Hen

ry VII., and, above all, by Henry VIII., Cambridge grew and flourished throughout the Middle Ages; but it was not until the time of Queen Elizabeth, the age of Bacon and Burleigh, when England was no longer governed either by soldiers or priests, but by statesmen by profession, that we meet with those names of which the university is proudest. Macaulay, himself a Cambridge man, boldly declares that "in intellectual activity, and in readiness to admit improvements, the superiority was then, and has ever since been, on the side of the less ancient and splendid institution. Cambridge had the honor of educating those celebrated Protestant bishops whom Oxford had the honor of burning; and at Cambridge were

formed the minds of all those statesmen to whom chiefly is to be attributed the secure establishment of the reformed religion in the north of Europe."

In the Civil Wars, while Oxford stood by the King, Cambridge as a whole was on the side of the Parliament. The reason of this is probably to be found, not so much in any want of loyalty in the colleges, as in the strong Parliamentarian feeling prevalent throughout the eastern counties. Indeed, there is a tradition at Trinity Hall that one of the fellows of that college began to collect arms and money for the use of the King, an enterprise which came suddenly to a close about the same time as an entry was made in one of

KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL.

the college registers, "Came Mr. O. Cromwell with a party": a sentence which satisfactorily accounts for his subsequent inaction. After the Revolution of 1688 Cambridge became as distinctly the Whig as Oxford was the Tory university. George I. enriched her library; George II. contributed munificently to her Senate House; and statues of each of these sovereigns, disguised as Roman emperors, stood until recently on either side of that building, while in humbler positions near the doorway are statues of the younger Pitt and of the "proud" Duke of Somerset, for sixty years Chancellor of the University.

The oldest building at present standing in Cambridge is un

For instance, the doubling the parts-much complained of as confusing everything-caused, I found, only the omission of four lines of Perdita's part, and the introduction of a harmless dummy for about three minutes before the curtain's fall. The excisions of words and phrases, which the natural growth of refinement between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries made necessary, were very few, and-much as she has been abused for it-Miss Anderson was right to make them. She did no more: there was no need. Dear old Will, though he calls a spade a spade, and deals with human nature as he saw it-the human nature of his time-is at heart always pure, always moral. In him you never find that elegant euphemistical glossing over of sin, to be laughed at in comedy and sentimentalized upon in tragedy until wrong and right are so confused that one shrinks from taking one's young daughters to almost any modern play.

The Winter's Tale is essentially a tale-no more. It goes against all the canons of dramatic unity, is full of ridiculous anachronisms, yet has a humorous interest and po

etic charm peculiarly its own. It must have come fresh to the critics of to-day, startling them, not out of their proprieties, but improprieties. The picture of a young man and young woman, bachelor and maid, innocently and virtuously in love with one another, of a wife so consciously pure that she can give the kiss of welcome to her husband's friend (as was the custom in Shakespeare's time) without thought of blame, and whose only reproach to that brutal husband is,

"Adien, my lord.

I never wished to see you sorry; now
I trust I shall,"

was a phase of dramatic interest
so new to the present generation
of play-goers and dramatic crit-
ics that it must have been to
them like a dish of strawberries
and cream after feeding upon
"high" very high-venison.
No wonder they carped at it, and
at the actress who, instead of the
Féodoras, Theodoras, in tragedy,
and the whole range of trans-
planted French ladies of comedy,
had courage to present to the
public two such women--merely
women-as Hermione and Per-
dita.

Miss Anderson is not a perfect Hermione, especially in the first scene, when she does not well manage a not always harmonious voice, and her manner is scarcely stately enough for "the daughter of a king"-the matron - queen whose sweet courtesy to her husband's guest is miles removed from modern "flirting." But at once she strikes the key-note of the character-of both characters, mother and daughter-thorough womanliness. Her fondling of Mamillius, her kindness to her women, her tender playfulness with Leontes, all carry out Shakespeare's conception. And in the trial scene, when a commoner actress would have made Hermione a ranting tragedy queen, Miss Anderson is simplicity itself a wronged, brokenhearted woman, sad and worn, who, but for her child, scarcely cares to defend herself. Her byplay is excellent, every gesture being full of pathos; and her blank-verse-the critics said she did not know how to declaim blank-verse-was not "declaimed" at all, but wrung from her, brokenly and by fits, exactly as in such a case would be. The only fault in this scene-as fine a one as ever Shakespeare wrote, and acted perfectly-is the condemned queen's parting look of reproach at her husband, which Miss Anderson would do well to reconsider or omit entirely.

Another stage "point" which was severely commented on, and must probably have seemed strange, because natural, to an audience accustomed to watch the unnatural ravings of heroines even in articulo mortis, was Her

mione's reception of the tidings that her little son is dead. In that supreme agony she neither shrieks nor moans, but stands paralyzed a moment; the stony look of her face is a perfect study; then covers it with her mantle, and sinks slowly down. Genius and nature could alone have suggested to Miss Anderson a gesture so pathetic and so real, just like that of the peasant woman who throws her apron over her head to weep. Any one who has ever received from Fate a blow which seems to turn the living, breathing woman into an image of stone, conscious only of one instinct-how best to conceal it will acknowledge the truthfulness of the delineation.

It was a bold idea, a critical test, to disappear from an audience thus, and reappear half an hour after as Perdita,

"the prettiest low-born lass that ever Danced on the greensward." That exquisite creature in whom "all she does still betters what is done" was never more exquisitely presented than by Miss Anderson. Physically she is a perfect Shakespeare's woman;

her beauty, her grace, the almost child-like sweetness of her face and gestures, and an atmosphere of innocent simplicity so completely un-" stagy," take one fairly by storm. We follow her with eager eyes, and truly when she dances we, like Florizel, wish her

"a wave of the sea, That she might do it ever."

If any fault can be found in a study that would have charmed Shakespeare's self, it is that the princess-peasant-being a princess-is a little too like a common girl in her demonstrations of affection for her "sweet friend." A certain reticence and dignity would have marked her most passionate tenderness. By-the-way, what a pity that Mr. Forbes Robertson, who acts so well the thankless and too elderly part of Leontes, could not also have doubled it with that of Florizel, and so made a true picture of that brave young prince who has the sense to see in the village girl a royal nature equal to his own, and holds to her with a love as pure as passionate, and defends her with a courageous fidelity. Florizel,

ful thing," says Claudio. "And shamed life a "And shamed life a hateful," answers Isabella. Nor does he ever make sin anything else than hateful. Dear old Will, even his comedy, when purged of certain verbal grossness peculiar to his time, is, as in the Winter's Tale, perfectly harmless to pure ears and eyes. For some months to come, let us hope, there will at least be one theatre in London where young people can go without tainting their fresh souls by images of wickedness, or, worse, putting vice in such pleasant or pathetic shape that they mistake it for virtue.

Why should it be so? Why should not managers, who are many of them most respectable men and women, and actors, often as good husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, as any of us all-why should they not combine to give the omnivorous British public wholesome food instead of garbage? Its appetite is wholesome still. Witness the honest delight with which it applauds "virtue rewarded and vice punished." What crowds went nightly to see Olivia, Claudian, and the like! and how every Shakespearian revival the like! and how every Shakespearian revival

usually confided to secondary performers, might in the hands of a really good actor be made an exceedingly fine study of a young man, a pattern to all the young men of to-day, from the "mashers" in the stalls to the "Arrys" of the gallery.

It is to bring forward this view of the stage as a great teacher, better than most books and many sermons, that I write the present notice of the Winter's Tale at the Lyceum. It is a charming spectacle, pleasant to the ear and delightful to the eye, for the artistic mise en scene is excellent, except for the dummy baby, not a "judicious baby," as a spectator observed, which evoked an irresistible titter. And the music is very good, except for the evil habit our orchestras are getting into of accompanying special bits, merely spoiling both music and speech. Besides all this, it is an innocent play. We come from it entirely free from that "bad taste in one's mouth" with which one generally quits a theatre. Shakespeare, if rough, is always wholesome; in him we never find that condoning and plastering over of vice which is the curse of the modern stage. "Death is a fear

may count upon a lengthened "run"! Why not give the people good food instead of bad?-provided the food is palatable.

And can it be possible that our honest English brains are unable to produce anything which is palatable without being dull? Are managers so afraid of this that their worst condemnation of a play is-I have known it given-"Oh, this will never pay: it is too moral"?

Will no one seriously consider how we can stem this fatal tide which is drifting us off in the lowest depths of Greek and Roman degradation, all the worse because like them it has a smooth surface of artistic beauty and refinement? Will no one raise a warning voice, especially to the young generation, "Take heed where you are

going"? And more, will no one try to arrest them on the fatal road before it is too late?

We have set aside the old superstition that as the church is God's house-which it is, or ought to be so the theatre must necessarily be the house of the devil. Actors, and actresses too, are not what they often, alas! used to be. Most of them, especially of the higher ranks, are cultivated gentlemen and gentlewomen, and many are very good men and good women-virtuous, domestic, with a high ideal of their art, intellectually and morally. So are managers not a few. Could not these, the wholesome leaven of a corrupt lump, combine to purify the whole lump? Could they not agree to "abhor that which is evil and cleave to that which is good"? Better than all the vetoes of the Lord Chamberlain would be an honest lessee who had the courage to say, as one lessee has been heard to say when urged to accept indecent French plays, "There are two sorts of love-one fair, one foul; the latter shall never enter my theatre." And if in support of this our leading actors, or, better, our actresses

favorites of the public whom managers must needs propitiatewould absolutely refuse to play such a part as Marguerite in La Dame aux Camellias, and the countless other parts familiar to the public, of which the whole interest consists in the breaking, or attempted breaking, or pardonable and pathetic breaking, of the Seventh Commandment, what a change would at once be made in the atmosphere of the stage! -as great spiritually as that which is soon to be made materially in substituting electric light for gas-"airs from heaven" instead of "blasts from hell." For to many people coming away from a modern play, or from the noxious air of the theatre where it is acted, is like quitting, in plain English, a moral hell. A very ingenious, elegant, amusing hell, but nevertheless as black as Avernus, and into which the descent is as easy.

If a reformation is to come at all, it must come, I believe-as most reformations do comefrom the women. Let those actresses, not few, I trust, who are stainless maidens, faithful wives, good mothers, take their stand, as apparently Miss Anderson does, and refuse to act immoral parts

in vicious plays. Let them lead the public taste instead of weakly following it; refuse to pamper its appetite for anything vile, and give it strong, pure, wholesome food. I believe it would "swallow" the sternest morality-the highest poetryif put before itin an attractive form.

There can be no possible objection to what is called "stage upholstery." If the public like spectacle, by all means let them have it. A real gem is none the worse for a beautiful setting. The exquisite eye-pictures of the Winter's Tale at the Lyceum are truly Shakespearian. Good acting is none the worse for picturesque accessories of every kind. The slight interpolations of dumbshow, murmuring crowds, etc., tell exceedingly well; and the world-known fun of Autolycus, Shepherd, and Clown is well sustained by capable actors. But that dresses, scenery, and decorations should constitute the whole of a play is as great a mistake as to suppose that the play can do without them.

It remains for Miss Mary Anderson-and perhaps for Mr. Wilson Barrett, who is said to have taken the Globe Theatre from Christmas next, and who, with one or two fatal exceptions, has done more than any manager to raise the tone of the stage-it remains for these and those like them to show that under all its feeble, melodramatic, or vicious outside there is a wholesome inward vitality in our British drama which can survive all foreign taint, and needs no bolstering up by translations or imitations, but can be both tragic and comic on its own account. Surely it is monstrous that the country which produced Shakespeare should be obliged to beg, borrow, or steal from other countries the dramatic element which it cannot find at home.

It could find it if it tried. We possess, we must possess, both good plays and good actors, if our managers would dare to try them. Our English stage, like our English literature, might be the greatest and the wholesomest in all the world. Courage only is needed-in dramatists, managers, actors. The public would follow like a flock of sheep-if they were but shown the way. That some one will arise and show it is the earnest hope with which the present paper is written.

The "Jolen
Author of "from Walshere Geatherman"