To blame such a play as "The Professor's Love Story" for having no seriousness of purpose were as silly a to blame Watteau for lacking the violent passion of a cartoonist like Boardman Robinson. To say that the play is trivial is merely to tell a lie. It is, moreover, to forget that there are such qualities as subtlety and niceness and that their effect may be quite a powerful as that produced by the shouting of a Danton. Barrie may be a greater influence than Brieux.

"The Professor's Love Story," as Mr. Arliss said after the second act, first produced by E. S. Willard, has still the freshness and delicacy of its first nights. What is remarkable in it is typical of the genius of Barrie. It is the power of rising form delicate nothings to real emotions with the break between so manages as to give the greatest effect. The audience is prepared by the first two acts for some clever and dainty trifle in the third, but the audience finds itself very near tears as it watches an act of high beauty and real poetry. The scene between the Professor and his sister at the window of their cottage is nothing if not poetical, both in feeling and in the really important though subordinate matter of stage setting. And as regards stage setting. Mr. Arliss is not following the modern tendency towards simplification. His scenery follows the conventionally detailed tradition of Sardou and the French with their real books and real doors, and real latches.

We rarely see such a play and our writers never make such a play. And as it shows that in our world there is no place for the refined and touching--it is a great pity.