penetration as well as cautious judgment.

In the middle of the last century there were in the kingdom of Poland,
beside the royal art institutions at Warsaw, four strong dramatic
companies, of genuine Polish stamp, which gave performances in the
most fashionable cities. Two of them were so excellent that they
often had the honor to play before the court. The peculiarity of these
companies was that they never performed foreign works, but literally
only their own. The managers were either themselves poets, or had
poets associated with them in business. Each was guided by his poet,
as Wallenstein by his astrologer. The establishment depended on
its dramatic ability, while its performances were limited almost
exclusively to the productions of its poet. The better companies,
however, were in the habit of making contracts with each other, by
which they exchanged the plays of their dramatists. This limitation to
native productions perhaps grew partly out of the want of familiarity
with foreign literature, partly from national feeling, and partly from
the fact that the Polish taste was as yet little affected by that of
the Germans, French, or English. In these circumstances there sprung
up a poetic creative faculty, which gave promise of a good and really
national drama. And even now, after wars, revolutions, and the schemes
of foreign rulers have alternately destroyed and degraded the stage,
and after the Poles have become poetically as well as politically
mere satellites of French ideas and culture, there still exist, as
respectable remains of the good old time, a few companies of players,
which, like their ancient predecessors, have their own poets, and
perform only his pieces, or at least others of Polish origin that he
has arranged and adapted. Such a company, whose principal personage
is called Richlawski, is now in Little Poland, in the cities Radom,
Kielce, Opatow, Sandomir, &c. A second, which generally remains in the