prehend, is shown in the conception of natural results; and to these the author of Mirandola advances at once, in the simplest, most direct, and most certain manner. One of his broken exclamations—a parenthesis-a repetition of words varying their accent -will often give evidence of more absolute power of thought, and more penetrating feeling, than a thousand nervous tirades of sentiment, or florid exhibitions of what is called imagination, would do. The reason is, that by these he marks his knowledge of the operation of human passion, and the display of human emotion; shows what fine and complicated sympathy with the varieties of human nature and accident, exists in his mind; and imparts to the spectator a sudden and vivacious consciousness of the weight and extent of the interest. Words may act like touches of Ithuriel's spear; revealing things in their real properties by a start. We know of no author that conveys to them more of this awakening faculty than Mr. Cornwall.

The perplexity of the piece, as most of our readers, probably, by this time, know, turns on an event, which may at first strike many as scarcely fitted for public exhibition. A father has married the lady who loves, and is beloved by, his son: but, though we are no friends to violent attacks on the instincts of morality and social order, made for the purpose of producing effect on the principle of convulsion,-there is not, we think, a word to be said fairly against the author of Mirandola, either as having fashioned his plot to excite interest by undue violence in deficiency of skill,—or as having improperly violated the reserve to which every man of honour and judgment will be inclined to adhere, in regard to those crimes and misfortunes which excite horror rather than indignation or pity. Mr. Cornwall does not seem to us to have transgressed against any sound rule, either of taste, or moral principle. The embarrassment in his play, is one that has a terrible cause, but not an unnatural one. It does not even involve licentious feeling, far less any disgusting passion. The parties have been placed unawares in a fearful situation towards each other; but the springs of nature run pure and

clear in their hearts, though the stream of their current is lashed to foam.-It is a proof of our author's great dexterity, as well as of his poetical amenity, that he has wrought out his catastrophe, in the very fullness of agony, despair, and death, without making any of the principal agents guilty. There is, indeed, a guilty person in a subordinate condition, whose contrivances have caused the sad mistake; but accident might have done as much. Neither tyranny, nor selfishness, nor duplicity, animate either father or son.-The unhappy lady has not been treacherous to her virgin love, nor does she prove false to her marriage vow. The misery comes attended by innocence; and the author has his reward for the purity of such a conception, in the increased pathos which this circumstance brings to bear on the sensibility of the spectator.

For dramatic construction, we would praise this piece in almost unqualified terms. With the exception of the first scenes, where the author introduces his serious action in a strain of light elegance, for which neither the audience nor the actors seemed perfectly prepared, the anxious expectation is carried on progressively increasing; though, at every instant, it would seem to have reached its climax. In the third act we are led to say-surely no more can be done to prolong, far less to add to the interest?-yet still it gradually rises to the catastrophe, when the agony drops headlong into that dark oblivious gulph, where suffering is for ever quieted, and "the weary are at rest. The author has effected this desirable progression by excellent management, though by the simplest means. There is no second plot,-which would be peculiarly inappropriate in such a piece as this, where the principal interest is so engrossing. The father and son sustain our attention all the way through; the glow of our feelings for them is not suffered to cool by diversion: but a masterly revolution is made to take place in the relative position of the two chief characters, which infuses fresh vigour into the march of the play, and renews the suspense, and the anxiety. The son at first thinks himself injured by his father; and addresses reproaches

Some faults have been found with the mechanical contrivances of the plot, and, perhaps, justly: the circumstance of the ring, which leads the duke to believe his wife and son false, and that of losing the letters, which leads to the discovery of their innocence, are too hackneyed and clumsy. Half an hour's thinking would have furnished better expedients-but we are ourselves very much inclined to deem such things trifles. It is not so with many, however:-there are numbers who are knowing and severe on these points, and, therefore, our author should have been more on his guard. Isabella's final escape from punishment too, has been objected to; but not justly, we think. Vice has rendered her abject: who thinks of her?

she is unworthy of a thought from any one above a hangman.

A word now of the actors :-the writer of this notice is not in the frequent habit of going to the theatrehis department in the Magazine being that of the essays and fracas; and it may, perhaps, be in part owing to this circumstance, that he was so much struck by Macready's elegant and spirited representation of Mirandola. Yet he cannot but think, that, although novelty might give him a peculiarly high relish for the excellencies of this actor's performance, it did not, belief of beauties which did not exist. and could not, deceive him into the Macready both looked, and acted, the high-spirited sensitive Prince, as if he had been a reflection from the clear pages of Boccacio, or one of Titian's portraits re-animated. To his dress we can apply no term short of exquisite: it was more picturesque than magnificent,-yet rich enough to coincide with the high the divisions between the classes of state of the wearer, at a period when dications of the most striking kind. society were marked by external inThe powerful were then grander objects of sight than the common people; they emulated the distinctions of nature herself, between the glorious and the mean objects of the earth. The prince towered above the slave and peasant as the oak towers above the bramble. The general character of Macready's performance we would describe as delicately discriminativewith the exception of some forced and false transitions of voice, which, without hesitation, we set down as bad and inexcusable imitations of Kean:-Charles Kemble's, on the other hand, was sometimes incorrect in the subtle parts, and of a more common order in the strong. Yet the author owes much to the latter gentleman, as well as to the former: nothing can be conceived more splendid and effective than Mr. Kemble's declamation; nothing more impressive than the manner in which Mr. Macready conveyed the swellings of passion, the alternations of tenderness and violence, and the deep agony of final despair. His tone of exclamation, at those heart-smiting words-"I WANT TO DIE "-which are alone sufficient to establish the author's claim to genius in the highest

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acceptation of the term,-was worthy of the conception which inspired them. It came upon our ears as the voice of a suffering beyond that of death-pangs-beyond torture-beyond patience, or endurance.

Miss Foote, as the ill-fated Duchess, had a dangerous competitor with her sorrow in her beauty: we should have sympathised more entirely with the former, but for the dazzling effect of the latter. To be as pretty as she is, is surely to be shielded against every mental suffering, more serious than a morning's pet, or an evening's fit of the sullens. Yet, if this lady were less fascinating as a woman, we suspect we should have a good deal to say in her praise, on the present occasion, as an actress. We are much mistaken if we did not frequently discover, when her eyes happened to be turned to the other side of the house from that where we sat, signs of a quick and delicate perception of the true interest of her scenic situation: -she seemed to bend, like a graceful willow, under the rude gust,-pliable to the impulse, yet elegant and elastic in prostration.

Mr. Abbot, as the friend of Guido, completely filled his part, and added much to the general vigour and truth of this most successful and captivating performance. The house was crowed to overflow on the first night; and the piece still runs with the same effect.

We are at first introduced at court, and are made acquainted with the usurping Duke, and with Celia, and Rosalind, in their richer dresses; but we are glad to escape with the fair cousins, from the pomp and heartless presence of royalty, to the streams and the meadows; and we feel that we are indeed free, and about to enjoy ourselves, when we are let loose upon the pleasant glades that run through the Forest of Arden.

Rosalind, and Jaques, and Touchstone, are the great people of the play. Rosalind has, perhaps, (may we venture to say so?) too much wit for a woman; and yet we do not wish that she had less. She is a delightful combination of gentleness and smart gaiety: she is just what we should desire our sister to be, but her tongue runs almost too fast for a wife. We love to hear her prattle and joke, but we at the same time think that Orlando is a bold man to venture on such a match; and begin to wish, when we have arrived at the end of the play, that she had not gone quite so directly against established decorum. Yet, after all, we love her, and wish her happy, and quit her with a full determination to resume our acquaintance at a future day. Touchstone is the fit servant of such a mistress. He seems to have collected all the wit of the court, and to let it run out upon every occasion, to the astonishment of every body less well-bred than himself: even he has a sylvan turn, and adopts the maiden Audrey, in order to show his unsophisticated taste. But Jaques is (to us) the great charm of this drama; he appears to have been born for no other purpose than to moralize

Under the shade of melancholy boughs—

and to waste his goodnatured spleen upon his fellow foresters. He is a man fit to enjoy a lazy noon in summer; or to be companion with the robin and the field-fare, when the skirts of the woods are white with snow. He is overflowing with a sad and pleasant humour; and he has a vein of satire withal, which would run to bitter, were it not neutralized by the indolence of his nature. What a picture (we have often thought) he would make, lying at his length,

Beside the brook that brawls along the wood,

and stopping with his hunting spear the weeds, and floating straws, which the current carried onwards in its flow! We have heard some slight objections made to Macready's Jaques; but, to us, it appeared a most delightful portrait, and we sometimes wondered how this high and spirited tragedian could tame down his buoyancy, and become so listless and idle as he seemed. There is a something in this which we do not quite understand: there is a mastery of the muscle, and a power over the eye, and the voice, which we would fain ourselves acquire.

Charles Kemble's Orlando is excellent; it is one of his very best performances. Mrs. Davison played Rosalind very cleverly, though she is not so young as she was; yet has she a pleasant wit, and we will not be the persons to object to her, because years have matured her acting, or because we remember her more lightsome and less judicious than she now is. Fawcett is, and always was, a capital Touchstone; and Mrs. Gibbs looks like the sun-flower, in the Chinese hat which she wears, when she so unwittingly entraps the affections of the courtly clown. Mr. Duruset is a very delicate and touching singer. We could hear him sing Under a greenwood tree, twenty times a day, and rise up at last without fatigue.

DRURY LANE.

Montalto. This theatre has also produced a tragedy, but its fate was unfortunate. We will not on that account, however, condemn it again. On the contrary, we think that it contained much clever and pleasant writing, and the style of it was decidedly better than that of some tragedies which have met with more success. The title of this play was Montalto, and it has been ascribed to a gentleman of the name of Lindsay. Miss Wilson, who has made her debut at Drury Lane, has not shamed the prologue which announced her. We were sadly afraid, we confess, that Mr. Elliston's red letters would amount to little or nothing, but we have been agrecably disappointed. The lady is a powerful singer :-al

though not so sweet (by no means so sweet) as Miss Stephens, and without that rich and almost cloying melody that surrounds the lower tones of Miss Tree, she has a voice of greater compass than either. The manner in which she sings Monster away, in Arne's Opera of Artaxerxes, shows at once, how completely she can sustain her full and powerful notes. There is no relapse, and no evasion, -no trilling or cadencing to hide a weakness of voice; but the stream of sound is finely and unremittingly kept up, till the period arrives for its change. Independently of this, she has good execution, and a confidence in herself. Her lower notes seem thick, and her voice sometimes degenerates into harshness, but she is a great acquisition to the musical world-and to Mr. Elliston everything. Yet,-if comparisons were not odious-we would say that, although she astonishes us, we do not hang upon her tones as we do on those of Miss Stephens: they do not so remain with us after she is gone: nor is there that strange luxury of sound in her voice, which Miss Tree showers forth, like notes from a stringed instrument;—but we have ample evidence, nevertheless, that she is a powerful singer. Why is it then that we play the critic's part? Because we must: and, perhaps, because she seems to have so complete a confidence in herself. Is it because she sings the air, (a mere bravura) of The Soldier tired, better than the earlier songs, where there is sentiment as well as sound? We believe there is something in this. She will have better opportunities of showing whether or not she can appreciate the higher qualities of music; and we shall wait for her appearance in the Beggar's Opera before carrying our remarks further.