First Lecture by M. Deschamps.

M. Deschamps gave the first of the French lectures on the modern French drama yesterday afternoon on the subject, "The Masters of the Contemporary Drama." M. Deschamps was introduced by M. Cambon, the French ambassador to the United States.

The contemporaneous French stage, represented by men still young, such as Paul Hervieu, Maurice Donnay, Francois de Curel, Brieux and Rostand, is still under the influence and the direction of the masters of yesterday.

Emile Augier (1820-1869), inaugurated in 1849, with the comedy he named "Gabrielle," a teaching which he continued for more than thirty years, first blaming "mesalliences" based on vanity and ridiculing those young men who put too much poetry in marriage, and old men who wed very young wives. Emile Augier has studied Society at large, moving in all spheres,--aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and the people. His moral comedies constitute a genuine social study. The principal disciple of Augier is now M. Brieux, to whom we can add M. F. de Curel.

Alexandre Dumas fils, (1824-1895), owed the first success of his celebrity to "La Dame aux Camelias", and "Question d'Argent." As Augier, although in a different way, he is especially a moralist and his attacks are directed against the vices of his time. "Le Fils Natural" and "Le Pere Predigue" are the two sides of one same social thesis. He also laughs at ill matched marriages. The aim of Dumas in to rebuild Society by means of the family, and the family, by means of love. He declared that always and everywhere he aimed at an "ideal of love, of family, and of work." He was thus a kind of legislator on the stage. His attacks against the code are well known. The most brilliant follower of Alexander Dumas fils is M. Paul Hervieu.

Henri Meilhac (1632-1697), and Ludovic Halevy (1834) have published a great many operettas, vaudevilles, comedies, and even ballets and pantomines. They are parodists in "La Belle Helene" (1864), already satiric in "La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein. In Fronfrou (1869) they attained great success.

As painters of the "monde ou Pon s'amuse," Meilhac and Halevy seem to have left their gifts of witty and amusing observation to M. Henri Lavedan and M. Maurice Donnay.

Victorien Sardou (1831) is the most clever dramatic writer that we can imagine. He attained success in all branches of literature. His "Odette" (1881) and "Georgette" (1885) are essays of comedies with a thesis. M. Sardou has written even "operettes," "bouffes," and in "Le Roi Carotte," he tried poetry. He also treated of social studies. Quite recently he took the opportunity offered by the literary napoleonism of new fashion in France, to give us his curious innovation of "Madame Sans Gene"

Though M. Sardou has written nearly always in prose, he taught even to the poets, the art of dramatic situations, in which he is a master. It would be easy to find the trace of his influence even in the charming and superb alexandrines of M. Edmond Rostand.