The first theatre I visited at New York, was
Barnum's. That great genius has set apart the
really well-ventilated lecture-room of his
museum for the use of his "powerful and well-
selected company," his too audible prompter,
his dowdy corps de ballet, his too prominent
machinist, his scenic artist and property man,
and his " Gas department " (see playbill).
Every day during the dramatic season, that tall
showy building at the corner of Broadway and
Ann-street, opposite the parish church, is open
for performances, the first of which takes place
at three, and the second at half-past seven.
Outside, the building is blazoned all over with
large coloured drawings of "The Beautiful
Angel, Fish, the Living Seal and Alligator, the
Lady with the Long Hair, the Happy Family,
the Lightning Calculator, the Tattooed New
Zealander, the Alpine Giants, the ' What Can
They Be?' and the ' What Is It?'"

VVhen the delighted visitor has seen the stuffed
monsters (What Can They Be?) found in a cave
" in the unexplored wilds of Africa"—and to any
one classifying which, according to any known
species or genus recorded by Goldsmith or
Cuvier, Mr. Barnum offers a reward of one
thousand dollars—and the horrid creature-idiot
called What Is It? or the Living Nondescript—
he moves on—from the creature " neither man
nor monkey, with the bright intelligent eye,
playful as a kitten and in every way interesting
and pleasing," to the sickly black Sea-lion,
who weighs one thousand pounds, eats sixty
pounds of fish a day, and drinks sixteen barrels
of sea-water every twenty-four hours—to the
theatre to see the "grand spectacular historical
drama in three parts called Joseph and his
Brethren." This is a most singular play,
partaking much of the character of the old Scripture
plays that the monks once took share in to
instruct and amuse the people and to obtain
money for the convent uses. It is also like the
mystery plays, interlarded with farce to extort
laughter from the clownish "barren spectators"
and groundlings; to this is superadded a spice
of the Richardson-show melodrama sentiment,
while it also resembles the country-fair tragedy
in brevity.

Barnum's object in this sort of mystery play,
with its garbled text and vulgar perversions of
Scripture, is to catch the quiet country people—
the simple New Hampshire farmers, the
Connecticut pedlars, and the Boston persuasionists,
who have the old puritanical horror of the ordinary
theatrical performance, and who call a play-
house "the devil's vantage ground." These
worthy people come to Barnum's to see the
curiosities, are caught by the sound of a " scriptural
piece," pay their extra twenty-five cents,
and imagine they have had all the pleasure of
seeing a real theatre without offending public
opinion at home.

As a specimen of pre-eminent clap-trap,
Barnum's programme of Joseph and his Brethren
is what his countrymen denominate "a caution."
I know not which is more astonishing, the
ignorance of Scripture, or the impudent change of
names and places. Egypt is turned to Babylon;
gipsies are brought in, a thousand years before
they existed; there is Khorsan, the buffoon
cook; and new names are given to the sons of
Isaac. Of course the scenery and dresses are
on a par with the plot, and but for the vigorous
villany of Uban (Mr. J. Harrison), the
pretty grief of Joseph (Mrs. J. J. Prior), and
the graceful poses of the Spirit of the Aloe
(Miss Agnes St. Clair), no power of human endurance
could have enabled me to sit out the three
acts. I had, however, some amusement for
spare moments of yawning ennui, in observing
"The Husband of the Albino Family," who came
up from down stairs—I suppose by Barnum's
drill order—and took a seat near me in the pit.
That " White Negro, or Moor, from
Madagascar," as the bill described him, was born
of perfectly black parents. There he sat
stolidly next me, with his pink eyes and his ten
mops-full of towy white hair, with his bare
arms and dirty cotton leggings, taking a
calm mechanical interest in Joseph and his
Brethren, and in all the dances, whether gipsy or
Babylonian. I began to wonder whether natural
enthusiasm or Barnum's will compelled the
unfortunate White Moor from Madagascar to
attend nightly to that dreary play. Perhaps, I
thought, Barnum expects all his company to
come and see Joseph; perhaps the " sea-lion"
is in a private-box, and the tattooed New
Zealander is behind the scenes; perhaps even that
over-dressed woman to the right is "Mdlle. Du
Monte, the celebrated fortune-teller," who, the
bill says, may be consulted at all times, " charge
twenty-five cents."

The chief theatres of New York are situated
in that magnificent but irregular street, Broadway.
Going up from the Central Park towards
the Fifth Avenue, you have Laura Keene's
Theatre and Niblo's on the right-hand side,
and on the left, Wallack's; while Broadway, the
Whitechapel of New York, now rejoices in two
theatres of its own, and in which the "hard-
fisted" rowdies sup their full of horrors.

The "sensation" pieces when I was in New
York, were Playing with Fire, the Colleen
Bawn, and the Octaroon. The first piece I
saw with great pleasure at Wallack's theatre,
where it drew great audiences. It seemed to
me a patchwork of old comic situations cleverly
interwoven, with a French vivacity in the
dialogues, and some true American fun in the local
allusions. The moral is the danger of a lover's
wantonly experimentalising with a heart which
he knows to be already his own. The fun
occasionally verged rather on buffoonery, and I
laughed till I cried; but the faces of the
stolid audience seemed immovable. I hardly
heard or saw a laugh the whole evening. One
would think the spectators had been puritanical
country people, who were half ashamed of being
present, or who had too great a contempt of
theatrical performances to care to understand
what they heard, or to follow the working out of
the story. Perhaps, however, the coolness was a
fashionable affectation, for it certainly is no general