give a lesson to society. The tragedy was called "Faulkener."

The season of 1808-09 opened favourably for Covent Garden, on the 12th of September. Mrs. Siddons had recovered her health, and acted Lady Macbeth to her brother's Macbeth. Lewis, Emery, and Simmons were "Raising the Wind" successfully, in Kenney's farce so called, and all looked prosperous and happy. Eight days afterward the theatre was a heap of ruins.

What chiefly affected old Mr. Harris, was the loss of lives, and of lives doubly dear to him as they were sacrificed in the attempt to save his property. I think these sufferers were, in number, twenty-two. A subscription for their families was soon started. I have given, in another work, Kemble's characteristic behaviour, and to that I must refer. The private losses were, perhaps, of fanciful value. Stage jewels are seldom brilliants. Cremonas are rarely worth three hundred guineas, and such an offer for one is seldom made but when it has been nullified by the possessor's assurance that no money should tempt him to part with it. But the prompter's stage copies, the music in score and in parts, the immense wardrobe, the extensive scenery and machinery, were of slow, or

impracticable reproduction. However, the present splendid theatre, and its equipments of every kind, show what may be done by perseverance and patronage. The proprietors of this theatre, in the first sense of their loss, had refused all consolation. "The gratitude of the world, and the people!" exclaimed Kemble to Lord Mountjoy, "My lord, Christ was crucified! De Wit was assassinated! so much for the world and the people!"

But the comfort at last crept into their minds, and told these despairing managers that they were partially insured, and that in ten years' time, at most, they must have built a new theatre, without such an aid as the fire-offices would now supply. Subscription shares would be sought after rather than shunned by the wealthy, where proprietors were honourable and steady. From utter despair, the transition is easy to extravagant desire. They now allowed both avarice and vanity to point their objects - the new Covent Garden Theatre was to become the grand emporium of pleasure; every refinement of accommodation was to tempt the great; their boxes were to be boudoirs, their very lobby belonged exclusively to their own order. Catalani was to gratify them with song, and D'Egville, no doubt, invent ballets

that should rival the Haymarket, which, observe, had volunteered its roof to shelter those whose own had fallen in, but not crushed their presumption.

The history of the building, its prodigality of cost, its consecration by the high priest of fashion, the long chastisement of all this absurdity in the O. P. war, and the success of its then moderated hopes, are all too recent for dilatation, and too mortifying to be unnecessarily revived. The consequences are even now in operation, and the longest head cannot see a permanence of either profit or peace. Deriving nothing from the theatre, Mr. Harris, the proprietor of seventwelfths of it, lives upon private funds in France, and cultivates his health and his land there, the theatre being leased, but the lease disputed; and Charles Kemble only last season could reckon himself safe, and that by the ministration of his daughter's talents.

"Blue

To return to the order of narration. beard," which had been dropped for five seasons, was now revived at Drury Lane, embraced, no doubt, in the classical anticipations of Mr. Wroughton. But to do anything worthy of Mrs. Jordan, was reserved for S. J. Arnold, who had

hitherto been confined to farce and opera. On the 5th of January his comedy, called "Man and Wife," was acted a first time, and was received with great applause. The interest is this: a scoundrel contracts a marriage, which he thinks to be illegal- he is deceived in his notion, and bound to all the consequences of his act. The play was strongly cast, - Jordan, the H. Siddons, Dowton, Johnstone, Mathews and Elliston, and Mrs. Jordan spoke an epilogue, which sported with the supposed alarm of an author. The qualities on which criticism was founded were thus located in this composition: nature in the upper gallery, humour in the lower, learning and taste in the boxes, sense and wit in the pit. There was a shrewdness in elevating learning and taste above sense and wit; but a quaint surprise about the curtsey couplet of the epilogue, hardly pleasing:

"And now, as brevity's the soul of wit, we know,
You all, most likely, would like me

to go."

A farce called the "Unconscious Counterfeit," brought forward on the 9th of February, greatly assisted the management; but, on the 23d of that month, a brother-in-law (not in wit) to Mr. Sheridan, as secretary to that farce, the Board of

Management, had the power to get out, with much splendour of decoration, an opera called the "Circassian Bride." There was on this absurd piece lavished a great deal of excellent music by Bishop, who now took that lead which he has maintained amongst us by efforts of such varied beauty. How he has allied himself to Shakespeare everybody knows; and upon the subject of such additions as the music grafted upon his comedies, I am particularly desirous to explain myself, lest what I have written or may still write upon the subject should be liable to misconception, or suspected to be unfriendly. My objection is not to the introduction of music, so called there, in the plays of Shakespeare, but to the converting comedy thus into opera, and singing the speeches of the characters. This totally confounds the species, and is an injury to the fame of Shakespeare. If I am asked how the fame of the poet is concerned in the absurdity, this is my answer: The highest powers of the consummate actor can alone do justice to the perfect conception and language of Shakespeare. What sort of justice can be expected from singers as the representatives of his characters? They must, however gifted, always reserve something