treat, and with the prepossession that it would be a sorry sort of affair after what we had seen some twenty years ago, we took our stand, and, with more liberality than usually falls to the share of a dramatic critic, we must confess that we found Master Punch every whit as merry a gentleman as when we had last the pleasure of falling into his company.

woman,

Nor were we the only "child of a larger growth" who was tempted to witness the exhibition. Young and old flocked round Punchinello's standard and mingled en masse, without distinction of rank, all animated by the same sentiment of joyous expectation. We had the curiosity, during the performance, to look round upon the motley group. There was not a face but smiled, and many burst out into shouts of uproarious laughter. It was curious to remark the risible gradations. "Eh! help us," said an old "that folks should laugh at such nonsense,' "" and her mouth was expanded to a full semicircular grin. Those of the throng who appeared least burthened with this world's goods seemed the most vociferous in their sympathy. A few decently dressed personages, who formed the outskirts of the crowd, appeared less boisterous in their mirth, but in any other company they would have laughed outright, as was manifest from the frequent application of their handkerchiefs to their mouths, and the audible though stifled titterings, and tears of pleasure, which proved how arduous was the struggle between nature and good breeding.

Two or three of a superior class kept at a still further distance, and only stole furtive glances at Punchinello, as if they would have it understood that they had merely stopped by accident, or were waiting for some person, or were looking at something else; yet, even these betrayed the truth, by their awkward attempts to conceal their risibility. One or two coarse jokes and miserable puns produced thunders of applause; they could not have been better received within the walls of Drury; and the last scene where Punch tricks the hangman, by getting his neck into the halter instead of his own, was received (as Elliston would have

said) with loud and reiterated bursts of laughter and applause from all parts of a crowded and brilliant mobility.

We cannot help thinking there is a great resemblance between the character of Punch and that of Falstaff.

Falstaff has scarcely a virtue (strictly so called) in the whole of his composition. He robs on the highway, cheats his hostess, slanders his Prince, and abuses his office. Yet, with all these drawbacks, we lose the rogue, and, such is the magic of his humour, we forgive all his faults, and would forgive them were they ten times more numerous. Punch is a scion of the same stock, but with still darker shades in his character;

He intrigues, beats his wife, and kills his child.

The scoundrel has no conscience-for his ill deeds never disturb the jollity of his humour; and his grief, when he expects to be hanged, has so little of penitence in it that it is the mere compunction of detected guilt anticipating its punishment.

Yet, who does not feel rejoiced at his outwitting the hangman? Who could wish so merry a fellow the fate he deserves, or help exclaiming with the poet, " Oh, Punch! with all thy faults, I love, I love thee still!"

MARY ANN ORGER.

In lovely Orger's form united shine,
Such female ease and majesty divine,
That each beholder must with awe declare
Apollo's Venus was not half so fair;

But, when the stores of judgment, wit, and sense
Her lips with graceful diffidence dispense,
Each hearer owns, with pleasure and surprise,
That Homer's Pallas was not half so wise.

These different charms such different passions move,
Who sees must reverence, but who hears must love.

Our heroine first saw the light in the metropolis; having been ushered into the duties and turmoils of existence by the joint efforts of Mr. and Mrs. William Ivers, then provincial performers. Our heroine was born on the 25th of February, 1788, and was frequently transplanted from town to town in her earliest infancy; and, whilst yet in arms, appeared upon, though she could not tread, the boards, as the child in King Henry the Eighth; in what manner she performed the arduous duties that thus devolved upon her we cannot state.

In 1793 we find the name of Miss Ivers in the bills of the Newbury theatre, for the girl in The Children in the Wood; a character in which she discovered considerable theatrical and musical talent, and which, it has been drolly enough said, she continued to perform till her increase of stature rendered it impossible for the robins to inhume her, without an expense of leaves too great for the finances of a country manager.

From that period she remained as a piece of stock utility

to Mr. Henry Thornton, whose troop moving every season, from Croydon, renowned for its walnuts, to Reading, celebrated for its spiritual raiment, and thence to Windsor, that seat of royalty and soap (not to mention the more ignoble residences of Gosport, Newbury, and Chelmsford), and collecting, like the industrious bee, the sweets of those respective plants, may be presumed to have been better fed, clothed, and washed, and consequently more sober, clean, and perfect than any circuitous troop in the united kingdom. Mr. Thornton, the Agamemnon of this confederacy, is said to have been bred to the law, yet, mirabile dictu, fame reports him as an honest, worthy man.

We are no admirers of popular prejudices, but an honest lawyer or a liberal manager is, to our thinking, assuredly a rara avis; but Harry Thornton, if he was not an honest limb of the law, was certainly a good fellow in a theatre, and a man of the most unaccountable singularities. His memory was intolerably bad; he could scarcely recollect the names of his oldest performers, and the following anecdotes of him may be relied on :-The Margravine of Anspach, herself a stage antique of no small curiosity, had a seat in the neighbourhood of Newbury, and occasionally honoured Mr. Thornton's company with a bespeak: the play selected on the occasion to which we allude, was Othello. Did ever rural manager yet exist, in any character, short of the hero ? Mr. Thornton was, of course, the Moor of Venice. The heroine being strangled, the Margravine rose to retire! Mr. Thornton, with a pair of wax candles, was in duty bound to bow her highness to her carriage. A change of dress was out of the question. Mr. Thornton was ever in a hurry, and where his body was present, his mind had a pertinacious knack of being absent. With his candles elevated above his head, his sable visage, and his Moorish apparel, he walked before his venerable visitor, bowing profoundly, and capering backward, like the champion at a coronation; when, lo! a blast from envious Boreas rushed through the entry, and his wax tapers were no longer lights. The manager, with

optics closed by reverence, unconscious of the "total eclipse," continued his crab-like course, and nothing but her own bright orbs could have possibly guided the lady to her carriage, through the palpable obscure. Mr. Thornton then very quietly returned home, and, weary with his command at Cyprus, crept into bed, totally forgetful of the part he had performed, and consequently unaware that lampblack and pomatum have but an indifferent sympathy with white sheets and coverlids. The astonishment of Mrs. Thornton, when the peep of Aurora betrayed her sable bedfellow, with sheets and pillow-cases chequered like the tones and semitones of a pianoforte, may be more easily imagined than described.

The second anecdote, which tradition has recorded, is as follows:-Miss Ivers was performing Miss Blandford, in Speed the Plough, and our manager enacted Sir Philip Blandford, her father. The reader will perhaps imagine he was regularly studied in the part; no such thing; the proper performer was overtaken either by Bacchus or John Doe. Here was a stand still. "Well, well," cries the Protean chief, "dress me for the part;" then, pulling his own nose (a liberty he was very apt to take), "read over the part to me while I'm dressing; there, there, that will do; oh aye, a murder-a castle, well, well, I know enough to

go on for it!" Mr. Thornton accordingly floundered

through the business as well as could be expected, till he arrived at the soul-harrowing recital of his crimes to Robert Handy, which, according to the author, finishes as follows:-"With one hand I tore the faithless woman from his damned embrace, and with the other stabbed my wretched brother to the heart." But Mr. Thornton, critically supposing that, even in the most horrid narrations, something should be left to the imagination of the audience, interpolated the text thus:-" I tore the faithless woman from his damned embrace; with one hand I stabbed my wretched brother to the heart, and-what do you think I did with the other?"