archaic and to travel abroad without becoming exotic, because it will
supply him always with a good reason for remaining a citizen of his own
country.

(1904.)




THE SUPREME LEADERS


In the fading annals of French Romanticism it is recorded that at the
first performance of an early play of the elder Dumas at the Odéon, a
band of enthusiasts, as misguided as they were youthful, were so
completely carried away that they formed a ring and danced in derision
around a bust of Racine which adorned that theater, declaring
boisterously that the elder dramatist was disgraced and disestablished:
_'Enfoncé Racine!'_

This puerile exploit took place not fourscore years ago, and already has
this play of Dumas disappeared beneath the wave of oblivion, its very
name being recalled only by special students of the history of the
French stage, while the Comédie-Française continues, year in and year
out, to act the best of Racine's tragedies, now nearly two centuries and
a half since they were first performed.

Again, in the records of the British theater of the eighteenth century,
we find mention of a countryman of John Home, who attended the first
performance of the reverend author's 'Douglas.' The play so worked upon