SINCE wrote of Mr. and Mrs. Crummles and their interesting company the position of the actor has greatly improved. According to the statute, not so very many years ago, the player was a rogue and a vagabond. Nowadays a famous tragedian or comedian may expect a knighthood as a proper recognition of his services in the cause of art. Not only this, the stage is becoming one of the professions. Young men from the universities find the A.D.C. and the O.U.D.C. stepping stones to the boards of the London theatres. No longer is the adoption of the mask and the buskin, or rather their modern equivalents, considered by those superior persons who are pleased to believe that they belong to the Ladies and gentlemen of birth and breeding are ready to appear before the footlights without concealing their identity by assuming . On the other hand, dramatic authors, who in the early part of the century were described on the programmes as now appear without their titles. The Church and the Stage have joined hands, and both claim the right of delivering sermons. In a word, play-acting has become, in the eyes of the right minded, absolutely respectable. This is as it should be. It seems to me that if one day of the week is given up to the pulpit, there can be no possible harm in devoting the other six to instruction more or less combined with amusement. It is a solid fact that, at length, London has playhouses in numbers bearing some proportion to the total of its inhabitants. Within the last eighteen months not only have theatres sprung into being in the heart of the metropolis, but in almost every suburb included in the postal district. And, taken all round, the entertainment provided has been of first-rate quality. The work of the Lord Chamberlain's Examiner has not been unpleasant. The public may be tired of but they act as their own censors and will not tolerate pieces defying official condemnation. Even has become a memory of the past, and it is no longer the thing-as it was twenty years ago-to visit the theatres a score of times successively to gaze upon the charms of the . Our young men nowadays spell Art with a capital vowel, and prefer the cultured talk of the