'For those who do not believe that our English home life is composed
mainly, if not entirely, of lying, drunkenness, and conjugal infidelity,
and its sequel divorce, yester evening at the Queen's Theatre must have
been a sad and dismal experience. That men and women who have vowed to love
each other do sometimes prove false to their troth no reasonable man will
deny. With the divorce court before our eyes, even the most enthusiastic
believer in the natural goodness and ultimate perfectibility of human
nature must admit that men and women are frail. But drunkenness and
infidelity are happily not characteristic of our English homes. Then why,
we ask, should a dramatist select such a theme, and by every artifice of
dialogue force into prominence all that is mean and painful in an
unfortunate woman's life? Always the same relentless method; the cold,
passionless curiosity of the vivisector; the scalpel is placed under the
nerve, and we are called upon to watch the quivering flesh. Never the kind
word, the tears, the effusion, which is man's highest prerogative, and
which separates him from the brute and signifies the immortal end for which
he was created. We hold that it is a pity to see so much talent wasted, and
it was indeed a melancholy sight to see so many capable actors and
actresses labouring to----'

'This is even worse than usual,' said Hubert; and glancing through half a
column of hysterical commonplace, he came upon the following:--

'But if this woman had succeeded in reclaiming from vice the man who
unjustly divorced her, and who in his misery goes back to ask her
forgiveness for pity's sake, what a lesson we should have had! And, with
lightened and not with heavier hearts, we should have left the theatre
comforted, better and happier men and women. But turning his back on the
goodness, truth, and love whither he had induced us to believe he was