pits, boxes, and galleries in the world, and is,
besides, set off with consummate stage tact, that
it is certain to keep its place.

Burlesques are undoing us. These insipid
pantomimes—for they are no more—are fostering
an earthy taste. Charming young ladies in
the dress of Greek goddesses are well enough
to look at; so are what are called
" breakdowns." Rich dresses, ladies in men's coats,
men in women's dresses; all this is for the eye;
but anything whose attraction is addressed to
the mere senses, how soon it palls! Observe,
too, how soon the limit is reached. The heathen
subjects are all but exhausted. So with rich
dresses, pageants, shows, real streets, and the
like. The more magnificent, the more
magnificence is wanting for the next effort. Expense
and imagination is soon at the end of its
tether. But with the mind it is otherwise.
Human character is inexhaustible.

Not that we are quite for what are called
revivals—for bursting into ancient sepulchres
and dragging out the old bones and remains.
There is a fashion belonging to every age.
Only a few plays, therefore, bear resurrection,
and they must be prepared judiciously. Here,
too, we may look back for direction to the past.
During Garrick's reign no plays were in such
favour as those of Beaumont and Fletcher,
Farquhar, and Shakespeare. Of all these, Rule a
Wife and Have a Wife was most followed. Every
one knew Estifania and the Copper Captain by
heart; but the judicious handling of Garrick
and his competent assistants had gone over
them carefully, and had pruned away whole
scenes, had added others merely to connect
or hasten the action, and had, in short,
abolished all heaviness and old fashion. So
with the Beaux Stratagem (how few have
seen the humours of Archer and Scrub!); so
with Ben Jonson's Alchemist—a stock play.
Such triumphs were these, that the players
were painted in their favourite characters,
and engraved in mezzotint, and had their
heads, like Lofty's, stuck in the print-
shops. Zoffary—second only to Hogarth—
found profit in painting these theatrical scenes
again and again; and his pictures of Abel
Drugger and other characters—as accurate as
photographs—show us that wonderful power
of facial expression which was in vogue then,
and which is now a lost art; part of which lost
art also is the power of elaborating a character
by pure acting and by-play and bearing—
not by grotesque twist of mouth, grotesque
clothes, and grotesque attitudes. Whose head
is now stuck in the print-shops? What
painter paints scenes from plays? What scene
would be worth the painting?

There is one dramatic department of these
old days, which, however, we will all willingly
let die—the old farce. There our ancestors
broke down, saving always in the instance of
O'Keefe.  Nothing more weary can be
conceived than pieces of the pattern of No Song
no Supper, The Turnpike Gate, and the like.
The two-act arrangement made such a
protraction and business of the " fun." As well
take your champagne in teaspoonfuls. Our
modem farces are better—brisk, smart, rattling;
though there is beginning to be a sameness in
the treatment. Our British nature never
grows tired of the one pattern. We have too
much of the cockney gentleman in the blue
coat and red check trousers, who takes
lodgings and gets into wrong rooms. But this
order of things is, alas! not our own. We
have imported it from the Palais Royal—nursery
of all that is witty, sparkling. The transported
article, however, wants the bloom more than
the expression of that unique theatre.

Another unfortunate hindrance to a healthy
position for the stage is the fact that the London
theatres are now not theatres for London, but
for the kingdom. The audiences who come to
see a successful piece coming from every town,
the piece is addressed to them. This is the
secret of the long "runs" of two and three
hundred nights, which are absolutely necessary
to let every one have an opportunity of seeing;
and the result is, that the people of the
metropolis are shut out from their own theatres;
the same piece being always in the bills. But
if we turn over a file of playbills of the last
century, we shall see a different play every night;
and thus the town had plenty of variety. Even
a new play did not run more than nine consecutive
nights. Thus the actors were practised and
encouraged too; for each had his fair chance.
Indeed, the arrangement at old Drury Lane,
under Garrick's management, was almost
magnificent. A staff of the best actors and actresses,
each a star—Clive, Pope, Young, King, Smith,
Dexter, Woodward, Shuter—were maintained
on the establishment. Each had his special
play and special part, and each had his night
in turn, while on off nights the best actors played
subordinate parts. Thus there was an agreeable
change.

Welcome indeed now, though languishing, is
a class of play much in favour towards the end
of the last century—THE MELODRAMA; good,
healthy melodramas, not softened down too much
into mental emotion, but with strong and raw
effects. Who would not relish the stirring and
exciting CASTLE OF ANDALUSIA, with its
brigands concealed under the castle in their private
cavern, and the rich dresses, and SHIELD'S capital
music? Even now The Wolf holds its own,
and is often trolled over the cheerful bowl:

        Locks, bolts, and bars soon fly asunder,
        Then to rifle, rob, and plunder!

Now sets in a cloud of a softer mystery—a spell
of the supernatural—and the curtain rises on the
CASTLE SPECTRE, by that famous professor of
diablerie, whom his friend Byron would have
given many a sugar-cane to have seen alive
again.  With such art is this piece
constructed, that there seems an air of nature and
probability over the whole, and the measured
progess over five acts led us on leisurely and
without haste.  There is a tranquil air of the
supernatural over the whole.  Were the Castle
Spectre properly and sumptuously revived, it
would be a most effective piece, even now;
but, unhappily, it is only a good play written