There is no country in which the theatre has so great a hold on the
public as in France; no country in which the successful dramatist has so
high a fame; no country perhaps in which the state of the stage so
faithfully represents the moral and intellectual condition of the people.
I say this not, of course, from my experience of countries which I have
not visited, but from all I hear of the stage in Germany and in England.

The impression left on my mind by the performances I witnessed is, that
the French people are becoming dwarfed. The comedies that please them
are but pleasant caricatures of petty sections in a corrupt society.
They contain no large types of human nature; their witticisms convey no
luminous flashes of truth; their sentiment is not pure and noble,--it is
a sickly and false perversion of the impure and ignoble into travesties
of the pure and noble.

Their melodramas cannot be classed as literature: all that really remains
of the old French genius is its vaudeville. Great dramatists create
great parts. One great part, such as a Rachel would gladly have
accepted, I have not seen in the dramas of the young generation.

High art has taken refuge in the opera; but that is not French opera.
I do not complain so much that French taste is less refined. I complain
that French intellect is lowered. The descent from "Polyeucte" to "Ruy
Blas" is great, not so much in the poetry of form as in the elevation of
thought; but the descent from "Ruy Blas" to the best drama now produced
is out of poetry altogether, and into those flats of prose which give not
even the glimpse of a mountain-top.

But now to the opera. S------ in Norma! The house was crowded, and its