the consummate art of Palmer to reconcile the discordant elements.

A player with Jack's talents, if we had one now, would not dare to do the part in the same manner. He would instinctively avoid every turn which might tend to unrealize, and so to make the character fascinating. He must take his cue from his spectators, who would expect a bad man and a good man as rigidly opposed to each other as the death-beds of those geniuses are contrasted in the prints, which, I am sorry to say, have disappeared from the windows of my old friend Carrington Bowles, of St. Paul's Church-yard memory (an exhibition as venerable as the adjacent cathedral, and almost coeval), of the bad and good man at the hour of death, where the ghastly apprehensions of the former-and truly the grim phantom with his reality of a toasting-fork is not to be despised - so finely contrast with the meek complacent kissing of the rod-taking it in like honey and butter- with which the latter submits to the scythe of the gentle bleeder, Time, who wields his lancet with the apprehensive finger of a popular young ladies' surgeon. What flesh, like loving grass, would not covet to meet halfway the stroke of such a delicate mower? John Palmer was twice an actor in this exquisite part. He was playing to you all the while that he was playing upon Sir Peter and his lady. You had the first intimation of a sentiment before it was on his lips. His altered voice was meant to you, and you were to suppose that his fictitious co-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at all of it. What was it to you if that half reality, the husband, was overreached by the puppetry, or the thin thing (lady Teazle's reputation) was persuaded it was dying of a plethora? The fortunes of Othello and Desdemona were not concerned in it. Poor Jack has passed from the stage in good time, that he did not live to this our age of seriousness. The pleasant old Teazle King, too, is gone in good time. His manner would scarce have passed current in our day. We must love or hate, acquit or condemn, censure or pity, exert our detestable coxcombry of moral judgment upon everything. Joseph Surface, to go down now, must be a downright revolting villain-no compromise; his first appearance must shock and give horror — his specious plausibilities, which the pleasurable faculties of our fathers welcomed with such hearty greetings, knowing that no harm (dramatic harm even) could come or was meant to come of them, must inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the

real canting person of the scene, for the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother's professions of a good heart center in downright self-satisfaction) must be loved and Joseph hated. To balance one disagreeable reality with another, Sir Peter Teazle must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old bachelor bridegroom, whose teasings (while King acted it) were evidently as much played off at you as they were meant to concern anybody on the stage, he must be a real person, capable in law of sustaining an injury — a person towards whom duties are to be acknowledged - the genuine crim. con. antagonist of the villainous seducer Joseph. To realize him more, his sufferings under his unfortunate match. must have the downright pungency of life-must (or should) make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the same predicament would move you in a neighbor or old friend. The delicious scenes which give the play its name and zest must affect you in the same serious manner as if you heard the reputation of a dear female friend attacked in your real presence. Crabtree and Sir Benjamin, those poor snakes that live but in the sunshine of your mirth, must be ripened by this hotbed process of realization into asps or amphisbænas; and Mrs. Candour - O frightful!- become a hooded serpent. O who that remembers Parsons and Dodd - the wasp and butterfly of the "School for Scandal "—in those two characters, and charming, natural Miss Pope, the perfect gentlewoman as distinguished from the fine lady of comedy, in this latter part, would forego the true scenic delight-the escape from life-the oblivion of consequences the holiday barring out of the pedant Reflection those Saturnalia of two or three brief hours, well won from the world to sit instead at one of our modern plays to have his coward conscience (that, forsooth, must not be left for a moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals - dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty without repose must be — and his moral vanity pampered with images of notional justice, notional beneficence, lives saved without the spectator's risk, and fortunes given away that cost the author nothing?

No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast in all its parts as this manager's comedy. Miss Farren had succeeded to Mrs. Abington in Lady Teazle, and Smith, the original Charles, had retired when I first saw it. The rest of the characters, with very slight exceptions, remained. I remember it was then the fashion to cry down John Kemble, who took the part of Charles

I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies-
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I loved a love once, fairest among women:
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man:
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;

Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces. Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood: Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse,

Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother!
Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces.

For some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are departed:
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

HESTER.

WHEN maidens such as Hester die,
Their place ye may not well supply,
Though ye among a thousand try,
With vain endeavor.

A month or more hath she been dead,
Yet cannot I by force be led
To think upon the wormy bed
And her together.

A springing motion in her gait,
A rising step, did indicate
Of pride and joy no common rate,
That flushed her spirit.

I know not by what name beside
I shall it call: if 'twas not pride,
It was a joy to that allied,
She did inherit.

Her parents held the Quaker rule,
Which doth the human feeling cool;

But she was trained in Nature's school—
Nature had blest her.

A waking eye, a prying mind,
A heart that stirs, is hard to bind;
A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind,
Ye could not Hester.

ON AN INFANT DYING AS SOON AS Born.

I SAW where in the shroud did lurk

A curious frame of Nature's work.
A floweret crushed in the bud,
A nameless piece of Babyhood,
Was in a cradle-coffin lying;

Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying;
So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb
For darker closets of the tomb!

She did but ope an eye, and put

A clear beam forth, then straight up shut
For the long dark: ne'er more to see
Through glasses of mortality.

Riddle of destiny, who can show

What thy short visit meant, or know

What thy errand here below?

Shall we say that Nature blind

Checked her hand and changed her mind,

Just when she had exactly wrought

A finished pattern without fault?

Could she flag, or could she tire,

Or lacked she the Promethean fire

(With her nine moons' long workings sickened)
That should thy little limbs have quickened?

Limbs so firm they seemed to assure
Life of health, and days mature:
Woman's self in miniature!
Limbs so fair they might supply
(Themselves now but cold imagery)
The sculptor to make Beauty by.
Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry
That babe or mother- one must die:
So in mercy left the stock,

And cut the branch, to save the shock
Of young years widowed; and the pain,
When single state comes back again
To the lone man who, 'reft of wife,
Thenceforwards drags a maimèd life?
The economy of Heaven is dark ;