And another poet has said:
“Non potuit regni caput esse Aurelia magni
Ergo quod superest, corque, animusque fuit”—
Orléans being so-called from the Emperor Aurelian, who enlarged the city towards the end of the third century, and gave it the name of Aurelianum, from which Aurliens, and finally Orléans.
Perhaps Orléanais has had the glorious privilege of suffering more than any other part of France for its country. It has been a battle-field on which some of the most famous personages in history have figured. Cæsar ran over the country as a conqueror; Attila withdrew from it conquered and humiliated; here the Maid of Orléans delivered France; here Francis de Guise died after forcing Charles V. to give up Metz; and here Turenne saved the country threatened by the Fronde. For two centuries the valley of the Loire had not been disturbed by the noise of arms, but Orléans, Coulmiers, Villepion, etc., now testify how the open heart of France has again bled and suffered.
USE AND ABUSE OF THE STAGE.
We are a very theatrical people. The old unbending Puritan stuff has almost died out amongst us; whether for better or worse, such is the fact. If a Brutus appeared in our midst to-day, he would be dubbed a “rowdy”; a Cato, a decided bore. Where we would not turn to look at them, we rush pell-mell to catch the first glimpse of a prince; even a lord finds a following here that must rather surprise him in a nation where he only expected to meet with the stern virtues of republicanism. We crowd in the same way to see a new “star” in the theatrical firmament, whether that star’s radiance consist in a melodious voice, or a dexterous use of the limbs, or a display of physical charms, so artistically concealed that not one of them is missed. So we throng to hear a great preacher or a loud one, provided he is “puffed” enough. Our politics have degenerated into a money-making concern; our religion, almost to a fashion. As it was a fashion in the old days when the Pharisee went up to the temple to pray, and his prayer consisted in thanking God that he was so far above the poor publican, together with a grand recital of his fastings and self-flagellations, and alms given to the poor; as it was a fashion later on, in the time of the Puritans and the Scotch under right John Knox, as Carlyle would call his hero—when the godly sat out their two hours’ sermon, and at the end applauded, and begged the preacher to continue, and sat them grimly a two hours more; going their way, comforted at heart, to murder Cavalier and Catholic, and all who wore the mark of the beast and the color of the scarlet woman.
We have touched on religion, for it is inwoven with our theme, the theatre, which sprang from religion, and, could it be made to preach as it has done, would, without lack of amusement or attraction, become a house of prayer, and not, as it now is, a home of corruption. The Greeks used it for a twofold purpose: to lash vice or as a political weapon. And nothing pierced so fatally the thick hide of the low demagogue, Cleon, as the barbed shafts of Aristophanes, scattered with all the great master’s skill among the keen-witted and appreciative Athenians. We see a similar instance to-day in the attack by one of the leaders of the modern French drama on a much greater man than Cleon. The Rabagas of Sardou has tended to demoralize Gambetta more than the holocaust he sacrificed, in his unwise and inopportune zeal, to the glory of France, as he would claim; in reality to its ruin. It has done more to lower him in the eyes of the people than the terrible logic of events. Why have not we a man to do the like for the rings and the political immorality that inundates us; from which we are only just beginning to emerge, without the certainty of not sinking beneath it again?
The stage with the Greeks was, moreover, a preacher. It held up lofty thoughts in language worthy of them. It preached the virtue of self-sacrifice and its nobleness in tones that could not fail to be heard. It did not mock the false with puny laughter and weak travestie; but laid it bare in all its ugliness, cutting deep into it and round about it, probing the soil that it grew in, piercing its thick rind with a weapon whose wound was death. And there stands out that wonderful play of the Prometheus Vinctus: the bold story of the god-born man, who, with the insight of the god-nature that was in him, saw the misery of his brethren, and dared to filch the sacred fire from heaven that he might lift them up from their degradation; who suffered on an eternity of woe, with the relentless bird ever gnawing at his vitals; and, as the curtain fell upon the convulsion of nature, foretold, in words indeed prophetic, the fall of Jove and of his false heaven. We read and stand amazed; wondering, now at the grace, now at the terrible power of the words; pitying the great and tameless soul enduring an agony unspeakable for his kind, chained there to the bare rock with the pitiless heavens above him, the starry-curtained night, and the ever-dimpling ocean smiling beneath him. We see Calvary and the Saviour there; and marvel at the boldness of the conception, the magnificence and prophetic truth of its carrying out. From this story of a pagan Greek, told to pagans before Christ came into the world, bearing the fire that he willed only to be kindled, we turn with shame and sickness at heart to the things of this day, of this era of civilization and enlightenment.