and familiarity of sense, to the lofty but striking platform of the imagination. He likes to see the face of man with the veil of time torn from it, and to feel the pulse of nature beating in all times and places alike. The smile of good-humoured surprise at folly, the tear of pity at misfortune, do not misbecome the face of man or woman. It is something delightful and instructive to have seen Coriolanus or King John in the habiliments of Mr. Kemble, to have shaken hands almost with Othello in the person of Mr. Kean, to have cowered before the spirit of Lady Macbeth in the glance of Mrs. Siddons. The stage at once gives a body to our thoughts, and refinement and expansion to our sensible impressions. It has not the pride and remoteness of abstract science; it has not the petty egotism of vulgar life. It is particularly wanted in great cities (where it of course flourishes most) to take off from the dissatisfaction and ennui that creep over our own pursuits from the indifference or contempt thrown upon them by others; and at the same time to reconcile our numberless discordant, incommensurable feelings and interests together, by giving us an immediate and common topic to engage our attention, and to rally us round the standard of our common humanity. We never hate a face that we have seen in the pit; and Liston's laugh would be a cordial to wash down

the oldest animosity of the most inveterate pitcritics.

The only drawback on the felicity and triumphant self-complacency of a play-goer's life, arises from the shortness of life itself. We miss the favourites, not of another age, but of our own-the idols of our youthful enthusiasm; and we cannot replace them by others. It does not shew that these are worse, because they are different from those though they had been better, they would not have been so good to us. It is the penalty of our nature, from Adam

:

downwards so Milton makes our first ancestor exclaim,

"Should God create

Another Eve, and I another rib afford,

Yet loss of thee would never from my heart."

:

We offer our best affections, our highest aspirations after the good and beautiful, on the altar of youth it is well if, in our after-age, we can sometimes rekindle the almost extinguished flame, and inhale its dying fragrance like the breath of incense, of sweet-smelling flowers and gums, to detain the spirit of life, the ethereal guest, a little longer in its frail abode to cheer and soothe it with the pleasures of memory, not with those of hope. While we can do this, life is worth living for: when we can do it no longer, its spring will soon go down, and we had

better not be! Who shall give us Mrs. Siddons again, but in a waking dream, a beatific vision of past years, crowned with other hopes and other feelings, whose pomp is also faded, and their glory and their power gone! Who shall in our time (or can ever to the eye of fancy) fill the stage, like her, with the dignity of their persons, and the emanations of their minds? Or who shall sit majestic on the throne of tragedy-a Goddess, a prophetess and a Musefrom which the lightning of her eye flashed o'er the mind, startling its inmost thoughts-and the thunder of her voice circled through the labouring breast, rousing deep and scarce-known feelings from their slumber? Who shall stalk over the stage of horrors, its presiding genius, or "play the hostess," at the banqueting scene of murder? Who shall walk in sleepless ecstasy of soul, and haunt the mind's eye ever after with the dread pageantry of suffering and of guilt? Who shall make tragedy once more stand with its feet upon the earth, and with its head raised above the skies, weeping tears and blood? That loss. is not to be repaired. While the stage lasts, there will never be another Mrs. Siddons! Tragedy seemed to set with her; and the rest are but blazing comets or fiery exhalations. It is pride and happiness enough for us to have lived at the same time with her, and one person more! But enough on this

subject. Those feelings that we are most anxious to do justice to, are those to which it is impossible we ever should!

To turn to something less serious.

We have not

same gentility,

There was the

the same pomp of tragedy nor the variety, and correctness in comedy. gay, fluttering, hair-brained Lewis; he that was called "Gentleman Lewis,"-all life, and fashion, and volubility, and whim; the greatest comic mannerist that perhaps ever lived; whose head seemed to be in his heels, and his wit at his finger's ends : who never let the stage stand still, and made your heart light and your head giddy with his infinite vivacity, and bustle, and hey-day animal spirits. We wonder how Death ever caught him in his mad, whirling career, or ever fixed his volatile spirit in a dull caput mortuum of dust and ashes? Nobody could break open a door, or jump over a table, or scale a ladder, or twirl a cocked hat, or dangle a cane, or play a jockey-nobleman, or a nobleman's jockey, like him. He was at Covent Garden. With him was Quick, who made an excellent self-important, busy, strutting, money-getting citizen; or crusty old guardian, in a brown suit and a bob wig. There was also Munden, who was as good an actor then as he is now; and Fawcett, who was at that time a much better one than he is at present; for he, of late, seems

to slur over his parts, wishes to merge the actor in the manager, and is grown serious before retiring from the stage. But a few years back (when he ran the race of popularity with Jack Bannister), nobody could give the view holloa of a fox-hunting country squire like him; and he sung AMO AMAS, as Lingo in the Agreeable Surprise, in a style of pathos to melt the heart of the young apprentices in the twoshilling gallery. But he appears to have grown averse to his profession, and indifferent to the applause he might acquire for himself, and to the pleasures he used to give to others. In turbulent and pragmatical characters, and in all that cast of parts which may be called the slang language of comedy, he hardly had his equal. Perhaps he might consider this walk of his art as beneath his ambition; but, in our judgment, whatever a man can do best, is worth his doing. At the same house was little Simmons, who remained there till lately, like a veteran at his post, till he fell down a flight of steps and broke his neck, without any one's seeming to know or care about the matter. Though one of those "who had gladdened life," his death by no means "eclipsed the gaiety of nations." The public are not grateful. They make an effort of generosity, collect all their reluctant admiration into a heap, and offer it up with servile ostentation at the shrine of some great name,