travellers--and, as a rule, it is the intelligent class that feels the
need of the educative influence of travel--look at our beautiful
monuments, wander through the streets and squares among the crowds that
fill them, and, observing them, I ask myself again: Do not such people
desire to study at closer range these persons who elbow them as they
pass; do they not wish to enter the houses of which they see but the
facades; do they not wish to know how Parisians live and speak and act by
their firesides? But time, alas! is lacking for the formation of those
intimate friendships which would bring this knowledge within their grasp.
French homes are rarely open to birds of passage, and visitors leave us
with regret that they have not been able to see more than the surface of
our civilization or to recognize by experience the note of our inner home
life.

How, then, shall this void be filled? Speaking in the first person, the
simplest means appears to be to study those whose profession it is to
describe the society of the time, and primarily, therefore, the works of
dramatic writers, who are supposed to draw a faithful picture of it. So
we go to the theatre, and usually derive keen pleasure therefrom. But is
pleasure all that we expect to find? What we should look for above
everything in a comedy or a drama is a representation, exact as possible,
of the manners and characters of the dramatis persona of the play; and
perhaps the conditions under which the play was written do not allow such
representation. The exact and studied portrayal of a character demands
from the author long preparation, and cannot be accomplished in a few
hours. From, the first scene to the last, each tale must be posed in the
author's mind exactly as it will be proved to be at the end. It is the
author's aim and mission to place completely before his audience the
souls of the "agonists" laying bare the complications of motive, and
throwing into relief the delicate shades of motive that sway them. Often,