PACIFIC TRIUMPHS.

T

RIUMPH again attends enlightened policy and arbitration! San Juan is lost to us by the award of EMPEROR WILLIAM. Let it go. The Americans have succeeded in getting our money. Now let them take our land also. All the world will see that we have the courage of our pacific principles, and mankind will applaud our heroic self-abnegation. Popularity will reward it and encourage perseverance in it. Go on. Sic itur ad astra. Excelsior!-pardon for the dog Latin. Spain would fain reclaim Gibraltar. To yield it to the Spaniards at once, without our saying a word, not to name striking a blow, were pusillanimous. Encouraged by the past, perhaps our Government will refer the demand for Gibraltar to arbitration too. To secure England against the possible partiality of any other European authority, let the referee be the POPE. Or, to make assurance of unbiassed and disinterested judgment doubly sure, suppose we say the President of the United States.

say,

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OUR REPRESENTATIVE MAN.

As for the piece, it is full of strong situations, inartistically led up to. As to the writing, Miss Chester's part is very good, and not a word is lost by MRS. VEZIN.

MR. LIN RAYNE, as Rupert, the really ill-treated outcast, took all he got in the most good-natured manner possible; and when, after being most forcibly told, by his supposed mother, who he wasn't, he, with a strong sense of the humour of his position, at once seized on the comic side of the picture, and asked, "Then who am I?" without, too, using any strong language on the subject, which he could have done if ladies hadn't been present, when he might have strengthened it by throwing in "the deuce"-I say, when he uttered these words, he quite carried the audience with him, and the house couldn't help chuckling.

Your Representative called to mind this same gentleman, a most conscientious actor, in a play called The Two Thorns (or some such title, so as to be as like as possible to the successful Two Roses), where he distinguished himself in a very funny speech, with a lapsus lingue in it, about what a young lady had said to him. There was much the same tone and manner about the above-mentioned "Then who am I?" and the question certainly did suggest a heap of difficulties, all (from Rupert's humorous point of view) more or less comic.

Then there was Michael Fortescue, a reprobate whose head of hair alone was quite enough to have led him into any amount of villainy. No doubt he must have descended to various crafty dodges in order to support that wig. It is true that, at the end of the piece, he repents of what it is proved, by the way, he didn't do, as far as Your Representative could understand it, and becomes virtuous, but this is after he has been exposed as a swindler, and having been unable to earn enough money for pomatum or dye, he has-I mean the wig has become grey.

The Earl of Montressor looked quite the nobleman-with a cold. His mother, a very heartless person, really ought to have insisted upon hot bath and mustard plaster at night, and lozenges during the day. The part is one that interests the audience, especially at this time of year.

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Isabel, the orphan ward, was charming, making allowances for her as an orphan and a ward. When she, in the last Act, glided down to the footlights, clasped her hands, looked up to the gallery, and said, Is it a dream? I seem to hear his footsteps"-or words to that effect I REPRESENTED You, Sir, at the Holborn Theatre the other even-meaning the footsteps of her lover, whom everyone had seen killed ing. I fancy I informed you of the fact last week, when I remarked in the Second Act, but who, (it being Rupert with his old appreciaon the fine acting of MRS. HERMANN VEZIN as Miss Chester. You tion of humour), is alive and well, and is actually-you'd scarcely are not easily pleased, though sometimes you pretend to be. I have believe it, if it wasn't Rupert all over, the sly dog!-stealing down noticed these phases of your moon, Sir, and believe me I am never behind her while she's speaking about him,-I say, when this young forgetful of your dignity. I am anxious for your reputation as an lady was going through this soliloquy, and when, having ended it, acute critic, and it would do your heart good to see my frown, my she fell with a squeak-I mean shriek-into Rupert's arms-just shake of the head, my permissive nod to the audience (as much as to like him, the funny outcast !-when all this happened, didn't Your now applaud, go it!"), and in fact my entire demeanour when Representative applaud Rupert, the humorous outcast, and Isabel, representing You in the stalls, or in a private box. You, Sir, have some the white muslin orphan ? Rather! But what I want to know is, old-fashioned ideas about a seat in the pit being the place for a critic. who chose the paper for Lady Montressor's drawing-room, in the Well, go there and welcome, with an orange. You may be happier Third Act? The Montressor family must have been curiously fond there than in the gilded saloons above; but as Your Representative of gorgeous colours, or perhaps they had let Montressor Castle for a I can't do it, and, what is more, I won't. My white tie represents term, and, in their absence, the tenant, some monied greengrocer your white tie (only such a much more perfect affair than yours, which, or cheesemonger, had papered it, according to his own taste. But, permit me to say, you manage somehow to make a muddle of), and emphatically, I never! my evening dress represents your evening dress, only that my velvet collar, brass buttons, pearl and coral studs, my flashing wristbands, and my tout ensemble make you shine with such an additional lustre, that when Your Representative appears in the lobby, at seven fortyfive P.M., the boxkeepers can only control their feelings by crying "Here he is!" This, Sir, is You. While you are by your own fireside, I am thus sacrificing myself to the fogs, and you are sitting by your logs; while I am risking cold and damp, you are reading by your lamp. But halt, Pegasus! I dismount. Sir, I am at the Holborn. The bill, I notice, informs me that the original drama called Miss Chester is by FLORENCE MARRYAT and SIR CHARLES YOUNG." In my ignorance (representing You, Sir, of course) of the etiquette of announcements such as this, I want to inquire why the gentleman's title is mentioned and not the lady's? Supposing the play were by MR. BROWN and MRS. SMITH (by kind permission of MR. SMITH, of course) would it be either proper, or pretty, to print in the bill that the drama was by SMITH and MR. BROWN? It doesn't look well, does it? Yet the cases are surely parallel. Or say it was LADY SMITH (by kind permission of LORD SMITH) and MR. BROWN who wrote it, would it be either correct, or nice, to say this piece is by LADY SMITH and BROWN? Or if MISS GEORGINA ROBINSON and MR. CRUSOE had been collaborateurs, shall we announce the authors publicly as MR. CRUSOE and GEORGINA ROBINSON? Isn't it paying a great respect to MR. CRUSOE, and being uncommonly familiar with GEORGINA? This, Sir, is what evidently struck You at once, and as Your Representative I am unable to answer the poser. So much for the bill, which, in other respects, is a very nice bill, and is, thank Heaven! neither ornamented with namby-pamby, flimsy lace-paper edges which tear, nor scented with a sickly odour, nor covered with the irrepressible advertisements.

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In such an apartment some very strong situation was absolutely necessary in order to distract your eye from that paper. So here we unite mother and son, wife and husband, and the curtain descends upon a lot of people who are evidently going to live happily ever afterwards. By the way, what a dreadful thing it is for an actor to have to fight against a past success. When MR. YOUNG came on as Annishaw the Lawyer (playing it well and carefully) what a number of people about whispered to one another as they gradually found him out, "Why, that's the Little Wee Dog!" and appeared really quite hurt when he didn't favour the company with that celebrated ditty, a proceeding which, except in moments of private social enjoyment, would have been highly indecorous. The audience got accustomed to him in Annishaw, and, I am glad to say did not demand the Little Wee Dog for the two-thousandth time. Your Representative was immensely interested in the deportment of three Italian villains in evening dress, who, in the Second Act, submitted to hear themselves abused, blackguarded, and their corrupt practices denounced by Rupert, in a spirit of the most Christian forbearance. They lost their temper just once, and gesticulated in an explanatory way to one another; but, on the whole, their bearing was exemplary. I was not sorry, judging from appearances, to hear that they were swindlers, and I sincerely trust that they never paid the Italian tailor who provided them with their evening costume.

Finally, as to the plot, as Your Representative (You, Sir, are not quick at plots) I say that once get over the difficulty of Lady Montressor's sister-in-law being in the house and calling herself Miss Chester for many years (I fancy eighteen was the number) without being recognised by any visitor, or by any one of the family happening to make an afternoon call, is more than I can understand. Either the Montressors, all, were very unsociable and never visited one another,

BLESS the Board of Works! It proposes to abolish the Tolls of all the Metropolitan Bridges. This would be a great boon to the owners of vehicles, to travellers by cab, and to a good many work-and, much as he admires that truly generous idea, would, with due people living south of the River. But the redemption of the Tolls will cost money; and the proposal of the Board of Works is to redeem them at the Londoners' expense. What will the Londoners in general get in return for their Coal and Wine Duties, or their Rates, by means of whose augmentation this great boon, that is to say, gratuity, is to be conferred on the above-named classes? The suburban highway-tolls, most, if not all, of them, have now been done away with for some time, to the great advantage of the horse and carriage-keeping classes. To the pedestrian ratepayer in moderate circumstances, who never takes a cab except to save time, or expense worse than that of cab-hire, the gain may be calculated, from personal experience, to have been, on an average, from sixpence to two shillings or half-a-crown a year. The loss may be estimated at about four guineas yearly by increased highway rates. His omnibus fares remain at their old figures, and even if they had been somewhat lowered, that would signify little to him, who, taxed as he is over head and ears, can ill afford to ride in an omnibus even, and never does if he can walk without getting wet and spoiling his clothes. His pecuniary profit, therefore, by the abolition of tolls is, by a very considerable amount, less than nothing. But then he enjoys the vivid pleasure and the proud consciousness of reflecting that he has contributed handsomely to lighten the expenses of some of his fellow-subjects, most of them a great deal better off than himself. He feels the honour thus devolved upon him very acutely; but still, on the whole, he would rather contribute only his fair share to the charges of the public thoroughfares.

When the ratepayer, ordinarily pedestrian, leaves London, or its neighbourhood, for a sojourn in the country, and, whilst there, happens to be obliged to travel otherwise than by foot, he finds himself stopped at intervals of very few miles, with a demand for threepence, or sixpence, or more, turnpike-toll. He thus pays to maintain the highways for his friends the farmers and landed gentry, and the richer class of independent persons and shopkeepers.