since borne the name. The Frenchman not only created the vaudeville, but
he reserved to himself its monopoly. Essentially French, it is
inimitable on any other stage. Of the many attempts made, none have
succeeded in catching its peculiar spirit. The Englishman has his farce,
the German his _possenspiel_, the Spaniard his _saynete_, but the
vaudeville will only flourish on French soil, or, at least, in the hands
of French authors and actors. Piron and Lesage were its fathers; their
mantle has been handed down through succeeding generations, worn
alternately by a Piis and a Barré, by a Panard, whom Marmontel called
the La Fontaine of the vaudeville, and a Desaugiers, until, in the
present day, it rests upon the shoulders of Scribe, and his legion of
rivals and imitators. With the exception of the four theatres royal and
the Italian opera, there is not a playhouse in Paris where it is not
performed, although in each it takes a different tone, to which the
actors, as they change from one stage to another, insensibly adapt
themselves. Thus the four principal vaudeville theatres have each their
own style. There is an immeasurable distance between the vaudeville
_grivois_, the laxity, not to say the positive indecency, of the Palais
Royal--supported by the _double-entendres_ of Ravel and Madame Lemenil,
and the buffoonery of Alcide Tousez--and the neat and correct little
comedies of the Gymnase, so admirably enacted by a Ferville, a Numa, and
a Rose Chéri. To the latter theatre, the Parisian matrons conduct their
daughters; the former they themselves hesitate to visit. The substance
is not invariably more praiseworthy at the one than at the other, but
the form is always more decorous.

In discussing the vaudeville, the theatre bearing that name naturally
claims the precedence, to which the excellence of its present company
also gives it some title. Until the year 1792, there existed at Paris no
theatre specially appropriated to this style of performance, which was