the character of Macbeth to an overflowing audience,
which included many of the most distinguished persons
of the day in the walks of literature, art, and fashion.
At the end of the play, Mr. Macready came forward in
his ordinary attire and delivered the following address:
—"My last theatrical part is played, and, in accordance
with long established usage, I appear once more before
you. Even if I were without precedent for the
discharge of this act of duty, it is one which my own
feelings would irresistibly urge upon me; for, as I look
back on my long professional career, I see in it but one
continuous record of indulgence and support extended to
me, cheering me in my onward progress, and upholding
me in most trying emergencies. I have therefore
been desirous of offering you my parting acknowledgments
for the partial kindness with which my humble
efforts have uniformly been received, and for a life
made happier by your favour. The distance of five-and-thirty
years has not dimmed my recollection of the
encouragement which gave fresh impulse to the
inexperienced essays of my youth, and stimulated me to
perseverance when struggling hardly for equality of
position with the genius and talent of those artists
whose superior excellence I ungrudgingly admitted,
admired, and honoured. That encouragement helped to
place me, in respect to privileges and emolument, on a
footing with my distinguished competitors. With the
growth of time your favour seemed to grow; and,
undisturbed in my hold on your opinion, from year to
year I found friends more closely and thickly clustering
round me. All I can advance to testify how justly I
have appreciated the patronage thus liberally awarded
me, is the devotion throughout those years of my best
energies to your service. My ambition to establish a
theatre, in regard to decorum and taste, worthy of our
country, and to leave in it the plays of our divine
Shakspeare fitly illustrated, was frustrated by those
whose duty it was, in virtue of the trust committed to
them, themselves to have undertaken the task. But
some good seed has yet been sown; and in the zeal and
creditable productions of certain of our present managers
we have assurance that the corrupt editions and
unseemly presentations of past days will never be restored,
but that the purity of our great poet's text will
henceforward be held on our English stage in the reverence it
ever should command. I have little more to say. By
some the relation of an actor to his audience is considered
slight and transient. I do not feel it so. The repeated
manifestation, under circumstances personally affecting
me, of your favourable sentiments towards me, will
live with life among my most grateful memories; and,
because I would not willingly abate one jot in your
esteem, I retire with the belief of yet unfailing powers,
rather than linger on the scene, to set in contrast the
feeble style of age with the more vigorous exertions
of my better years. Words—at least such as I can
command—are ineffectual to convey my thanks. In
offering them, you will believe I feel far more than I
give utterance to. With sentiments of the deepest
gratitude I take my leave, bidding you, ladies and
gentlemen, in my professional capacity, with regret and
most respectfully farewell." The scene of enthusiasm
excited by these parting words was indescribable, and
will be long remembered by those who witnessed it and
shared in it.

On Saturday, the 1st of March, a dinner was given
to Mr. Macready, by his friends and admirers, on his
retirement from the stage. In consequence of the eager
demand for admissions, the Hall of Commerce was
engaged for the occasion, and upwards of six hundred
tickets were issued. The chair was occupied by Sir E.
Bulwer Lytton, who, in giving the toast "Health,
happiness, and long life to William Macready,'' paid a
tribute equally just and eloquent to his merits as an
artist and a man. Mr. Macready, in his reply, made
some excellent remarks on the duties of an actor, and
on the subject of his management of the two great
theatres (to which the chairman had alluded) he
said:—Of my direction of the two patent theatres, on
which my friend has so kindly dilated, I wish to say
but little. The preamble of their patents recites, as a
condition of their grant, that the theatres shall be
instituted for the promotion of virtue and to be
instructive to the human race. I think these are the
words. I can only say that it was my ambition, to the
best of my ability, to obey that injunction; and believing
in the principle that property has its duties as well as
its rights, I conceived that the proprietors should have
co-operated with me. They thought otherwise, and I
was reluctantly compelled to relinquish, on
disadvantageous terms, my half-achieved enterprise.
Others will take up this uncompleted work, and if
inquiry were set on foot for one best qualified to undertake
the task, I should seek him in the theatre which
by eight years' labour he has, from the most degraded
condition, raised high in public estimation, not only as
regards the intelligence and respectability of his
audiences, but by the learned and tasteful spirit of his
productions." It is hardly necessary, to say, that Mr.
Phelps, of Sadler's Wells, was the object of this just
and graceful compliment.—Mr. C. Dickens in giving
the health of Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, took occasion to
make an interesting communication. He had (he said)
the very strongest reason at this time to bear his
testimony to Sir Bulwer Lytton's great consideration
for evils which were sometimes attendant upon
literature, though not upon him; for, in conjunction
with some others who were present, he (Mr. Dickens)
had just embarked with their chairman in a design for
smoothing the rugged way of young labourers both in
literature and the fine arts, and for cheering, but by no
eleemosynary means, the declining years of meritorious
age. If that project prospered, as he believed it would,
and as he knew it ought to do, it would be an honour to
England, where there was now a reproach upon her,
and it would have originated in the sympathy and
consideration of their chairman, having been first
brought into practical operation by the unstinted gift of
his intellect and labour, and endowed from its very
cradle by his munificent generosity.—Mr. John Forster,
who gave the toast of  "Dramatic Literature," said that
he had been entrusted with a few lines of poetry,
addressed to their distinguished guest, by the poet
laureate Alfred Tennyson, with permission to read
them. Being loudly called upon to do so, Mr. Forster
read the following Sonnet:

   "Farewell, Macready, since to-night we part.
       Full-handed thunders often have confest
       Thy power, well-used to move the public breast.
    We thank thee with one voice, and from the heart.
    Farewell, Macready; since this night we part.
       Go, take thine honours home: rank with the best,
       Garrick, and statelier Kemble, and the rest
    Who made a nation purer thro' their art.
    Thine is it, that our Drama did not die,
       Nor flicker down to brainless Pantomime,
       And those gilt gauds men-children swarm to see.
    Farewell, Macready; moral, grave, sublime.
    Our Shakespeare's bland and universal eye
       Dwells pleased, thro' twice a hundred years, on thee."

Among the most prominent speeches were those of
M. Van der Weyer the Belgian, and the Chevalier Bunsen,
the Prussian minister, both in a genial spirit, and
evincing a thorough knowledge and warm appreciation
of English art and literature. The festival was broken
up by the arrival of midnight.

Her Majesty's Theatre opened for the season on
Saturday the 22nd, when Mlle. Duprez, the daughter of
M. Duprez, the celebrated French Tenor, made her
début with great success in Lucia di Lammermoor.

Molière's Tartuffe, closely translated into English
blank verse, by Mr. John Oxenford, was produced at
the Haymarket on the 25th. The performance was
closely copied from the style of the Théâtre Français;
and this novel experiment was quite successful.

The first and second Concerts of the Philharmonic
Society, took place on the 10th and 24th; and, as usual,
drew crowded audiences.

Among the works of art about to be exhibited at the
Crystal Palace, there is a picture in enamel, and on glass,
of Shakspeare reading one of his plays to Queen Elizabeth
and her Court; painted by Mr. Baillie of Wardour
Street. A beautiful and very remarkable specimen of
an art, almost unknown in England.