characteristic of American audiences; who,
at the Bowery, heave and bellow at every allusion
to Liberty, Freedom, or other Republican pass-
words, and who, at Chicago and other provincial
towns, go into stormy raptures at the invisible
comic Irishman or the melodramatic provincial
favourite.

But here I must confess that the Americans
generally, though full of dry humour and
delighting in extravagant stories, are indubitably
a taciturn and grave people. Something
of the bygone Indian's stolidness, something
of the dead Puritan's bilious melancholy, hangs
about them; and the exhaustive languor of
the climate does not make them more elastic.
I have been at hundreds of hotel dinners and
never seen a smile. I have travelled two thousand
miles by railway, and hardly heard a laugh.
How, then, could I help saying to myself at the
end of my journey, " This is a great and
progressive nation; but the men are no longer
Englishmen; their ideal is changed; their mode
of teaching their ideal is different"?

The famous old Bowery Theatre, the
"Victoria" of New York, is all but dead. The new
Bowery worthily replaces it. It has much the
same features as its predecessor, but is less
"rowdy," less salient in character, more respectable,
and (must I say, therefore?) duller.

I found it a handsome stuccoed Grecian
building with massy vestibule, standing in a
part of the Bowery, elbowing for room among
old clothes shops, showy chemists, fruit-stalls
kept by negroes, warehouses, hardware stores, and
banjo shops. I entered past some gilded
refreshment-stalls, with a noisy, free-and-easy crew.
The play was William Tell, and Mr. Wallack,
as that muscular patriot, pelted poor Gesler
with " blank verse Billingsgate" to the delight of
the mob. A favoured ballet-girl as the son, was
tripping and unnaturally innocent, while the stout
and velvety wife of the loquacious Swiss brought
down the "house" by the usual jerky utterance
of clap-trap strains about fir-trees, alpine snows,
crystal lakes, and liberty.

I was seated in an extraordinary stage-box
that opened into the orchestra, and was taking
a quiet inspection of the rows of pale dirty
faces—of the old men boys, and the hideous
juvenile old men among the " hard-fisted" of
the Bowery—when I suddenly became aware of
a quiet stern well-dressed spectator in a grey
paletot who stood with his back to the
orchestra, watching every fresh "bhoy" who
entered and took his seat in the "auditorium,"
as stage people in America call the pit of a
theatre. I suppose he is a sort of majordomo,
for he forces this boy to make room for
another; another he sends to a special indicated
spot on a back bench. Every one obeys him
with a sullen obedience, and, when he speaks, the
benches near him whisper respectful and timid
comment on his mandates. How unflinching
and stern he looks; there is something quite
military about him; but why that soupçon of
the jailer arranging the audience in a prison
chapel ? My curiosity is aroused. I stoop over
into the now silent orchestra, and whispering,
ask the big drum. He replies, sotto voce,

"Why, mister, it's the policeman—yes,
siure."

The Bowery audience is rough and turbulent,
and this policeman out of uniform is always here
to preserve order and decency. Every boy in
the audience—and two-thirds of the house are
striplings—are cracking pecan nuts (soft-shelled
oily nuts), and I am told that every morning a
small cart-load of shells is found when the theatre
is cleaned. After William Tell, the end of which
is extinguished in vociferous applause, and "Hei,
hei, heis!" comes a comedy, founded on a well-
known English story, the name of which I must
not divulge. It is chiefly curious from the
extraordinary ignorance shown of every modern
English costume. The burglars are Italian
banditti, and the beadle is like a beef-eater
of the time of Henry the Eighth. The dialogue
is sown thick with Americanisms; the servants
are all boldly independent of all order or
control, and the difference of English and American
manners made much of the delightful story, I
fear, unintelligible to the rowdies.

Laura Keene's theatre is one of the most tasteful
in New York, and is built, as all American
theatres are, more for the comfort of the many
than the few. The gallery is convenient, large,
and airy; the pit is not encroached upon and
choked by the boxes. The lights, as they should
be, are low, making those on the stage more
brilliant by contrast. A good effect, too, is
produced by placing large statues holding
cornucopias of light where with us there would be
stage-boxes.

I will not, however, criticise the Monkey Boy,
an adaptation from the French, which was the
"sensation" drama when I went to the theatre;
nor did I go to see Miss Hindley's admirers
present that sweet singer of Albany, a basket of
flowers, "to which was attached a magnificent
diamond cross;" but I went to Niblo's Theatre
to hear that great "sensation" tragedian,
Rosencrantz Buster, in Othello.

Four years Buster had been in retirement in
his luxurious villa, absorbed in buying editions of
Shakespeare, studying all " the different maggots
which have crept out of that great carcase," and
from time to time letting the New York papers
know his eagerness to gather more laurels. As
an American paper said:

"It is now four years since Buster has performed
in New York, and prior to the announcement of his
return to the stage, the public began to fear that no
opportunity was to be again afforded of witnessing
the matchless impersonations of the only truly great
actor living; and apart from his own career, the
history of the American theatre will chronicle no event
to call forth the degree of warm-hearted enthusiasm
that will characterise the reception and subsequent
engagement of Rosencrantz Buster."

I had heard much of the effrontery of that
great interpreter of Shakespeare, and more of
the dreadful riot at the theatre when Mr.
Macready acted, and which led to bloodshed.
I bought my ticket a week beforehand, for