of eloquence that is in our American people has not begun to attain the fulness, the richness, the completeness, of which it is capable. We rejoice in this school, because it is cultivating or doing very much to help in cultivating the most active and the most thoughtful people in the world, and also the most influential in finished and expressive speech. So we rejoice, and I am glad to express the satisfaction with which our whole community rejoices, to see a school which has already done such good work beginning under such favorable auspices another year of its happy and effective life.

LIVING PICTURES.

BOSTON has a theatre, which, according to its own.

er's boast, is "the most beautiful in the world." It is finely decorated, everything about it is in the highest style of decorative art. But what are the performances upon its stage? The veriest horse-play, inartistic and degrading to taste and public feeling. We have nothing here that is dramatic or that pretends to be dramatic. A lot of light dances; a muscular giant; some trained animals not so well trained as Barnum's; an old lyric, such as "Sally in our Alley," the words changed and sung mechanically without any reference to the feeling. Everything belongs to the plane of show,—nothing is dramatic.

The house is not dedicated to the drama; it is dedicated merely to amusement. It has no art on its stage,

and no pretence to art.

One of the latest and most distinguished of the presentations of this house has been the Living Picture

shows, copied from those which have been given in London. We go here and find often a refined audience, people—the more's the pity-who boast of culture; but we find among them no power whatever to distinguish or to appreciate the subtleties of art.

One picture shown, for example, reveals a dog and a boy sitting on a board, a copy, of course, from a painting. The dog is not a dog at all, only a plaster cast, but an attempt is made to make people feel that it is a dog; a string is tied to the tail, so this stiff jointed tail is made to wag. You can see the string easily from any part of the orchestra. Now this wagging tail, of course, is an endeavor to deceive the eye. The aim is delusion, not illusion. Artistic illusion appeals to the imagination and the creative instinct of man; but all that is shown here is an appeal to or rather an endeavor to deceive the senses. The ignorant are pleased, while those who have any true artistic instinct, that feel the truth, subtlety, and simplicity of art, - these are grieved. The whole aim, in fact, is to make a show, to appeal to the groundlings, and to ignore the judicious, "the censure of the which one is worth a whole theatre of others."

Another picture shown, and one which is regarded by many as the best, is "Clinging to the Cross." It is meant to be a religious picture. A pretty girl, dressed in thin transparent drapery, the flesh tints of her body most beautifully seen through a delicate veil, is hanging to a cross. The colors around are copied carefully from the picture, and some thunder and lightning are introduced as accessories to make the delusion more pronounced. The effect is pleasing at first to the vulgar eye, and the picture is greatly admired; but look at the face of the young woman. She is very pretty, she is trying to

look prettier; there is no expression except insipidity and self-satisfaction upon her countenance. There is nothing suggestive of real feeling. It is not a religious picture at all. It is only a show of light colors and a pretty woman. True art deals with subtleties. It is the trifles, the smallest wrinkles about the eye, that show genuineness of expression and depth of feeling. Here the appeal is merely to the senses, the mind is completely ignored. Those delicate subtleties which appeal to the imagination are entirely lacking.

It is for this reason that these pictures are essentially vulgar. Ruskin says that the chief element of vulgarity is insensibility. These pictures develop insensibility to the subtlest and noblest elements of art. They develop insensibility to delicacy and the refined feelings of the soul. There is a certain external beauty, but all the imaginative elements are lost. The shell is here, but the soul is gone.

These pictures are among the best shown; there were other things much worse; for example, "Washington crossing the Delaware." The actor struck an attitude of the most pompous pride, entirely out of keeping with the character of Washington. The audience clapped and enjoyed it immensely, and G. Washington, Esq., was no doubt greatly elated with pride at the success of his curved back and elevated nose.

The best of the pictures were those in which children posed. The children were innocent and looked innocent, and we entirely overlooked the imperfections of poise which were so offensive in the adults.

It is a sad fact that this theatre has been built by the success of low forms of entertainments. But always the lowest art makes the most money. An endeavor to flat

ter the people who have no art to think that they appreciate and feel art, always commands a price. Financial success or popularity are not necessary signs of artistic excellence. These facts show that a city like Boston, where we are supposed to have culture and refinement, has a good deal of pretence and mere sham culture. Real and genuine depth is often lacking, or at least is confined to the few everywhere.

Not only is it sad that the lowest forms of self-styled dramatic art and oratoric training are supported so well that men are growing rich out of the destruction of taste, imagination, and feeling for art, but a sadder thing about all this is that this condition of things seems to be growing and not lessening. Living pictures have no doubt come to run the customary period of fashion and fads; they will be carried all over the world to develop greater vulgarity and to postpone still farther the higher development of art, and especially of true dramatic art.

In everything there is some good. Blessings often come in strange disguises. One good result of such exhibitions is that they will teach people the fact that all shows of beautiful girls in scant costumes under electric light, arranged in beautiful pictures, belong really not to dramatic art, but to the low plane of the spectacular. Some of course regret that they have to sit through a programme of choruses and dances to see these Living Pictures. Let them not, however, condemn the dances, because really the pictures they come to see, even though professedly religious, are upon the same plane of art.

Another benefit resulting from these exhibitions, will be to show the real artistic value of schools that teach "posing" as one of their most important branches Parents who are anxious that their children shall not be

prepared for the stage may see that such work is on a lower plane than real dramatic art. Churches and other institutions can see what "tableaux vivants" and "Greek posing" really mean in the realm of art.

It may also be hoped that institutions which have turned up their self-righteous noses at the idea of an Irving being asked to read before certain classes, or of German classes being taken to see a German play, may receive a little light as to the real grades in dramatic art, the high and the low, the good and the bad, independent of such names as actor" or "theatre," and see that what is bad is bad, and equally bad whether in a church parlor or upon a variety stage.

The opinion of leading artists is well worth our attention on the subject of living pictures. John La Farge, one of the foremost artists of this country, said once that his model gave the true criticism upon living pictures. She said, "I was not pleased. I found a lot of living people trying to look like stuffed ones." This, he says, is the real fact regarding living pictures. Art is the expression of life. The canvas or the medium through which art speaks is mechanical and dead. Art consists in breathing into it the breath of life; but a living picture takes living people and tries to make them look like wax figures. It is the reverse of the artistic process. True art is the direct revelation of the living man.

There is a special reason why living pictures are injurious in the work of vocal expression. Vocal expression is the most living of arts. It is the simplest, the most immediate, the most direct revelation of the processes of the mind. It is the direct revelation of the life and feeling of the man. The same is true of pantomimic expression. Posing develops affectation. It is placing the