552 Notes of the Month. 



sharks, porpuses, lobsters, turbots, and other salt-water fish into a 

 fresh- water stream, which does not even empty itself into the sea. 



The second piece, " Ruth Tudor," is so disgracefully bad, that we 

 scarcely could sit it out. Puns without point, witless jests, and situa- 

 tions without effect, make up the sum of this abortion. Mrs. Yates 

 played one of the parts, and, though evidently labouring under indis- 

 position, made the most of it as she always does. By me way, Mrs. 

 Yates is a remarkable example of the disadvantages of our large 

 theatres to actors and actresses whose physical powers do not equal 

 their discrimination and abilities. We recollect her well in her first 

 season at Covent Garden, when she played Lady Teazle to Farren's 

 Sir Peter, Fawcett's Sir Oliver, Young and C. Kemble in the Joseph 

 and Charles Surface, Jones as Sir Benjamin Backbite, Mrs. Gibbs as 

 Mrs. Candour, and, we believe, her present husband in Moses. It 

 could not be the want of support, for such a cast will not be soon met 

 with again, but though graceful, elegant, and judicious, Miss Brun~ 

 ton produced no effect as Lady Teazle. Shortly afterwards, when 

 her father was Lessee .of the theatre in Tottenham Street, she ap-< 

 peared there, and soon drew respectable and numerous audiences ta 

 that not very fashionable theatre. Having united herself to Yates 

 when he, in conjunction with Matthews, took the Adelphi, she made 

 that stage her own, and is admitted to be unrivalled in domestic 

 tragedy and natural pathos. Yet, lately, when she tried Drury 

 Lane, her performances passed unnoticed. To what can this be at- 

 tributed but the unhealthy magnitude of our theatres, which have 

 outgrown the proper limits of their size, and in which all delicate 

 intonations and fine shades of expression are utterly lost, and that 

 only can be appreciated which is energetic and powerful^ These 

 last are certainly important qualities, but we most sincerely wish to 

 see the national stage reduced to a size where all can see and hear 

 and enjoy every species of ornament belonging to the histrionic art. 



NOTES OF THE MONTH. 



" Nescio quid meditans nugarum et totus inillis." HORACE. 



PROFUSE PARSIMONY. We perceive by the Scotch papers, that the pedestal 

 of a statue, intended to be erected in Edinburgh to the memory of the Duke 

 of York, has arrived at its destination. This is peculiarly a-propos just now. 

 The Scotch Highlanders are starving ; the empire resounds with the echo of 

 their woes, re-echoed in every newspaper, from every pulpit, and by every 

 philanthropist in Great Britain. All our fiddlers have been rasping their cat- 

 gut to beget compassion in human bowels for the sufferings of the kilted ones, 

 and our singers have, in some instances, taken the rheumatics while ascending 

 the chromatic scale in behalf of the denizens of Ben Nevis. The " Abbots- 

 ford Fund" is plethoric with evidences of English munificence, and the 

 Sawnies cry out against the degeneracy of the age in permitting the bones of 

 the author of " Waverly " to sleep in aught but porphyry or agate. AH 

 Scotland teems with substantial proofs of our proverbial generosity, exemplified 

 in the most prodigal, profuse, and (in nine cases out of ten) most foolish 

 fashion possible ; and yet the expenditure of a shilling in such objects as 



