ma; their tragi-comedies, like Bottom's play forms "lamentable tragedies full of very pleasant mirth!" However, the author should have his privileges, and strew his stage with carcases, or convulse it with buffoonery, if such be his object: the drop of the curtain brings them all to life again! Honest John Bull will have the worth of his money, and when he goes to the theatre, he will not be contented if he has not feasted his eyes with a few mortal stabs, smotherings, &c. Of late years a great taste for melo-dramas has prevailed, and the splendid manner with which the scenery and dresses are made in Covent-Garden, gives them a vogue which they do not deserve. These pieces are usually made up of a horrible villain, an ill-natured uncle, a "fool as gross as ignorance made drunk," a youthful hero as brave as Cæsar and chaste as Scipio-and, finally, a beautiful heroine, who is most outrageously in love. With these materials is cooked up a dish of horrors, strong enough for any palate! The tragedies founded on mythological fables, however terrible, have a certain perfume of antiquity about them, which preserves them from putrefaction; and the serpents that twine round the head of the furies, recal to the classic mind some of the most awful sublimities of ancient superstition: but the melo-drama of the present day has not a single redeeming quality, and its extreme folly is the only remedy against its deleterecus tendency.

I have already given you my opinion of Kean's acting. His overbearing conduct to other performers, (not unlike that of Rich, mentioned above,) has been injurious to the interests of Drury-Lane, I am told that he intends making a theatrical tour through our country next year; if he does so, I hope that our enlightened audiences will not encourage his insolence by fulsome adulation.

Lord Byron says of Young, that he is "first rate mediocrity." In the affecting drama of The Stranger, he displays great talent. In the scene in which he pours forth his misanthropical feelings to his friend, when by a climax of pathetic proofs, he strives to convince him that his distrust of mankind is well-founded, he breaks out into a paroxysm of indignation, which is crowned with the reiterated applauses of the audience. The retirement and marriage of Miss O'Neill, has deprived the English tragedy of her last legitimate representative: no more shall be witnessed with agony the widowed griefs of Almeria; the playful tenderness and the melancholy fate of the lovely Capulet; the suspected fidelity and meek patience of Desdemona; and the chastening rebuke of virtue, embodied and exalted in the character of Evadne!

In spite of the improvements introduced by Garrick, the English comedy is very defective in point of morality. Voltaire says that it is the language of debauchery, not of politeness. As for comedies (says Diderot, in his Re

marks on Dramatic Poetry,) the English have none; they have, in their place, satires full of gayety and force, but without morals and without taste. The pieces of Vanbrugh, Congreve and Farquhar, abound with licentious sentiments and allusions. The indelicacy of these writers, in the female characters which they draw, is really abominable; most of these are women of loose principles-and if a virtuous one happens to be introduced, she is, in return, complimented with a weak understanding, little short of idiotism! Lord Kaimes, in his Elements of Criticism, expresses himself in the following strong terms on the subject of such authors: "How odious ought those writers to be, who thus spread infection through their native country; employing the talents which they have received from their Maker, most traitorously against himself, by attempting to corrupt and disfigure his creatures. If the comedies of Congreve did not rack him with remorse in his last moments, he must have been lost to all sense of virtue." What page of "The Woman of Pleasure" could be more beastly than Act. 1, Sc. 1. of Murphy's Way to Keep him or Act. 5, Sc. 2nd. and 5th. of the Careless Husband? The morality of the French comedy is infinitely more strict, and has a refined and sentimental turn inconsistent with low-life buffoonery or vulgar ribaldry.

The English stage can boast of some excellent comic performers. Munden, Elliston, Farren, Dowton, Charles Kemble and Liston,

are foremost on the list. Old Munden is sometimes grotesque and romantic; but his humour is rich and original, and his acting is the very sublime of farce. The chief forte of Elliston is in heedless gayety and whimsical extravagance, touching the springs of mirth, and raising the pleasurable flutterings of the heart.Jones is the most impudent performer I ever beheld. I do not think that I ever witnessed a more amusing piece of consummate assurance and self-possession, than his acting in Husbands and Wives, where Tickall rushes into a stranger's house to seek refuge from bailiffs, and after imploring the compassion of the hostess, runs into an adjoining room, whence he very coolly issues dressed in the night gown of its owner, and addressing Madame as her spouse, and the constables as the gentleman of the house, he calmly dismisses them to search for their victim!

Liston is one of those who, as Madame de Sevigné says," abuse the privilege which the men have to be ugly." His phyz is most ludicrously out of all proportions, which adds not a little to the effect produced by his truly comic acting. Madame de Stael, speaking of the celebrated Mirabeau, says that "his very ugliness was eloquent:" in the same way it may be said of Liston that his very ugliness is comical! His exhibitions of ignorance and folly are so natural, his stupidity so unconscious and so happy, his looks are so blissfully ignorant, and his manners so naive and genuine, that he

appears to be one of Nature's happiest jests,

made in her most frolicsome mood!

Dowton is my favourite among the English comedians. His expressions of honesty and independence of spirit heighten our love for human nature, and would almost make a bigotted Presbyterian believe that it is possible to have the highest virtues and the deepest feelings of humanity, without one spark of cursed fanaticism. Dowton expresses the intensest conceptions and the most terrific passion, with a force and pathos equal to a consummate tragedian. His bursts of generous feeling, and noble consciousness of virtue and integrity, present the truest expression of the most enthusiastic passions in the human breast, He has the singular art of combining his humour with his pathos, so as to make us laugh and weep at the same moment. I have often observed a young lady so affected by the mingled sensations which he kindled, that she perfectly answered the exquisite description which Shakspeare gives of Cordelia smiling through her tears:

"Those happy smiles

That play'd on her ripe lip, seem'd not to know
What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence
As pearls from diamonds dropt.'

In witnessing Charles Kemble's performance, we are tempted to believe that the age of chivalry is not yet departed: he appears inspired by the virtuous pride and the lofty virtue of