people were stark mad about the reappearance of
Buster. Squeezed and hot, angry and crushed,
I took my seat in Niblo's handsome and
commodious theatre, which was almost next door to
my hotel. I soon found myself in beautiful
Venice, standing under Brabantio's window,
and telling him of the flight of Desdemona.
Presently Othello entered with earth-shaking
step—a colossal frame with the bumping legs of
the Farnese Hercules, exaggerated into caricature
and clothed in tights of chocolate-coloured
silk. Intense self-belief, and some careful study,
led him at times to good elocution, and even to
a sort of "Brummagem" dignity. True, when he
struck up Cassio's sword in the drunken brawl
by night at Cyprus, he did it with a sudden not
ill-intended leap of almost tiger ferocity; true,
when he led away Desdemona, he did it with
some dignity; but these lucid intervals were
brief. Rampant conceit, and the vulgarisms of
a bovine nature, were always breaking out.

Burton, the great American comedian, is dead,
and so is Booth. But Brougham still remains;
and Booth's son, who is one of the "lions" of
Boston. I saw him in the comedy of Don Cæsar
de Bazan, and thought him quaint, thoughtful,
collected, and above the average; but I saw him
in tragedy, and at once confessed him a genius.
I liked him, however, better in melodrama than
even in Shakespeare. I saw his Hamlet, Richard
the Third, and Rigoletto; and in the last strange
and ghastly play he was passionate and original.
His changes from fury to fear were subtly shaded,
and his merriment as he crept about in his pied
dress, bells, and bauble, was horrid and unearthly,
as it should be. I confess that in Richard the
Third, especially when he put on his silver scales
and ran about, the little genius (for he is of
short stature) looked rather like a lively salmon;
but his quiet earnestness, and his fine expressive
countenance, destroyed all sense of ridicule. At
Chicago, I saw Mr. Hudson, a clever Irishman,
in the Colleen Bawn, and I was truly pleased,
as Chicago people think every one is bound
to be, by the intelligence of Mr. M'Vicar (the
lessee) and his very clever daughter. But how
could I have any heart for Mr. Bourcicault's
pathos and humour when, as I walked to the
theatre along the lake shore, I thought of the
Lady Elgin and her unhappy passengers? the
night-wind, even then, howling their stormy
requiem!

The tone of American theatrical criticism is
very rough and familiar. No sentiment or
crotchety maundering about the great singers, and
downright abuse if they do not do their best. I
give a specimen of American fun on the Academy
of Music from Yankee Notions:

"Mr. Fagan takes pleasure in stating that he's
expended millions of dollars and eighteen
and three-quarters cents in the purchase of two
living sopraneys, just arrived from the coast of Italy,
&c. They sung at the North Pole last week with
so much applause, that the roof of the place had to
be taken off to prevent people being
suffocated. The second sopraney was born in St.
Peter's at Rome, of poor but honest parents. She
commenced her career at La Scaly in Milan at three
years oId. Her voice is in six octaves, and sounds
like a canary-bird. Mr. Fagan has also two
beautiful specimens of wild tenorys. They was captured
after a battle of six days, and can sing beautiful.
The first one's voice goes up as high as a big bank-
note, and as low as B darned. The second can sing
several notes of hand, and once caused the
spontaneous combustion of a fiddle that tried to keep up
with him."

A curious proof of the provincial character of
New York is the way in which the critics of
"the Empire City" constantly allude to the
conductor of theatrical orchestras, who in England
would be unknown even by name to any but
the dramatic writer, or the green-room habitué.
Hear what the New York Illustrated News critic
says to Mr. Baker, the conductor at Laura
Keene's Theatre:

"Were I, in my present frame of mind, contiguous
to Baker, I would take him tenderly by the hand,
and with a mild but reproachful gaze at his pendant
whiskers, I would apostrophise him. As an erring
son of music, I would seek to win him back to the
true path by gentle remonstrance and earnest prayer.
I would say to him, ' Why, oh! Baker, do you, who
know better, degrade the power and beauty of
music by pandering to the tastes of a vulgar
populace? Why do you let them drag you down, instead
of raising them up? Why do you, instead of playing
the pure classical music of the Germans, the soft
and sensuous arias of the Italians, agonise the ears
of your hearers with hideous olla podridas, you call
pots pourris? Why do you accompany your orchestra
with cat-calls, katydids, penny whistles, fish horns,
and fearful human howls? Why do you patronise
the Hibernian and the Gael?"

The negro entertainment is even more popular
in America than in England. Stump
orations, silver-belt jigs, and banjo obligatos, are
the delight of none more than of the negroes
themselves. The songs about slaves are modified
for the Southern States, and are approved of by
the planters. They have never an abolitionist
tendency, and therefore pass current at both ends
of the Mississippi. Rice and other men who,
twenty years ago or so, originated the negro
entertainments, derived some of their fun from the
study of real negro dances, but these have long
since been exaggerated and transformed. Negro
entertainments are said occasionally to lead to
amusing scenes, and of these the following story
sketches one of the most characteristic and not
one of the least amusing:

Some time ago, when the celebrated Sanford's
Philadelphian Nigger Opera Troupe was at
Richmond (Va.), the city was full of strangers from
the country. Conspicuous among these was
Mr. Charles Loxley, a rich tobacco planter from
a central state, a sensible but dogged man,
who had recently lost many slaves.

"Loxley was seen under much excitement, in the
act of rising, with an earnest look towards the stage.
On being asked what was the matter, L. replied, 'That
fellow with the tambourine is my Josh.' His friend
thought he was mistaken, and tried to convince him
of his error—but no, nothing would do, he was
certain that the nigger was his Josh, aud have him he