STAGE LIFE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2402, 16 December 1881, Page 3

STAGE LIFE.

How many of yon strait-laced ladies, who bo savagely condtmn the actress without recommendation to mercy, would pass scatheless through the ordeal to which she is subjected, the temptations by which she is surrounded? To be homely in mind and face, without beauty or wit; to be bora and reared and coddled in all the respectabilities and conventionalities ; to be watched so carefully that you could never find the opportunity of going astray, even if you desired it; —in short, to develop into an immaculate matron, is not such a marvellous matter to congratulate yourself upon. But to be born altogether out of the orthodoxies, left to your own wild will; to be poor, beantifnl and brilliant, to see the handsomest men in the land sighing at your feet, doing homage to your talents as well ac to your face, and then to come out of the fire unscathed, as many au actress has done

and will do—then, lady, yon have earned the right to look down upon one who has not been blessed with your power or resistance. Bigoted asceticism revels in those gloomy pictures in which the shadows are unnaturally deepened, and the lights are omitted ; but gentler moralists might draw from that same source the brightest examples of noble self devotion, undaunted perseverance, and divine charity.—“ Lights of the Old English Stage.”