Government of Kalisch, is under the direction of a certain Felinski,
and through his excellent dramatic compositions has gained a
reputation equal to that of the band of Strauss in music. Yet these
companies are only relics. The Polish drama in general has now a
character and destiny which was not to be expected a hundred years
since.

The origin of the Russian theater is altogether more recent. It is
true that Peter the Great meddled a good deal with the theater as well
as with other things, but it was not till the Empress Catharine
that dramatic literature was really emancipated by the court. Under
Alexander and Nicholas the most magnificent arrangements have been
made in every one of the cities that from time to time is honored by
the residence of the Emperor, so that Russia boasts of possessing five
theaters, two of which excel everything in Europe in respect to size
and splendor, but yet possesses no sort of taste for dramatic art. The
stage, in the empire of the Muscovites, is like a rose-bush grafted on
a wild forest tree. It has not grown up naturally from a poetic want
in the people, and finds in the country little or nothing in the way
of a poetic basis. Accordingly, the theater in Russia is in every
respect a foreign institution. Not national in its origin, it has not
struck its roots into the heart of the people. Only here and there
a feeble germ of theatrical literature has made its way through the
obstinate barbarism of the Russian nature. The mass have no feeling
for dramatic poetry, while the cultivated classes exhibit a most
striking want of taste.

But in Russia everything is inverted. What in other nations is
the final result of a long life, is there the beginning. A natural
development of the people appears to its rulers too circuitous,