1829. ] The Theatres. 51 
French novelists and dramatists were so long in the practice of affixing 
upon Frederic the Id. ; a hero, who after losing his Parisian popularity 
by soundly beating their gallant compatriots, recovered it tenfold by his 
infidelity. But as Frederic is now a little exhausted, Charles the XIIth 
comes in for a share in the sorrows and smiles of the most easily sorrow- 
ing and smiling population on the circumference of the globe; and this 
northern brute, in whom the savage made the madman more atrocious, 
and the madman made the savage more bent on his own ruin, and that 
of his kingdom, figures as the man of feeling. Nothing can be more 
shadowy than the story. A Swedish Colonel has for some pre- 
sumed offence, been exiled from the service. He retires to the country, 
where he is assisted by a hospitable peasant. By some accident he has had 
an opportunity of saving the king’s life. The circumstance is revealed. 
Charles overhears the colonel’s and the peasant’s daughters arranging the 
mode in which the exile was to be replaced in the rays of favour ; and 
instead of ordering the two advisers to be locked up in one of the royal 
guard rooms, or sent to beat hemp in some hyperborean house of correc- 
tion, which would have been the natural course of this military brute, he 
melts into romance upon the spot, feels his early error, and orders the 
Colonel to appear for the reinstatement of his character, and even for 
his elevation to the rank of General; the whole being done in the 
regular style of a French king of melodrame. The peasant’s daughter 
was played by Miss Love cleverly, as she plays every thing; and the 
Colonel’s by Miss Tree languidly, as she seldom plays any thing. But 
the part gave no opportunity for her skill, and she had not much to do 
beyond winning all hearts, king’s, general’s, and aid’s-de-camp, by a 
smile in perpetual requisition. 
“Love in Wrinkles,” a little opera, also from the French, but of 
higher pretensions, gave room for Braham’s advantageous exhibition of 
his latent powers as an actor. The original is “ La Vielle,” a well 
known and favourite fragment in one act, played at, we think, the 
«Opera Comique,” in Paris. The heroine is the handsome young 
widow of a Russian General, fallen in the French campaigns. Return- 
ing through a wild and turbulent country, her only resource to avoid 
insult is the disguise of an old woman. She is, however, overtaken by 
a party of French plunderers, and is in danger, old as she is; but a 
oung French chevalier rides up, and gallantly sets her free to return to 
er castle. The campaign turns out unlucky for the French, and the 
young officer wounded, and a prisoner, is sent to the identical castle of the 
old lady. She had been struck with his gallantry, and retains her dis- 
guise, while she practises upon his heart, and astonishes him by the 
consciousness that he has a growing tendre for a Venus sixty years old. 
But an order comes to send all prisoners to Siberia. The officer and 
Countess are equally in dismay. The only resource is a contract of 
marriage, which gives the rites of citizenship to the husband, yet, which 
the old lady proposes as a matrimonial nullity, and merely an expedient 
_ to save the chevalier from so formidable a journey. The marriage is 
‘solemnized. But the chevalier discovers, to his great discomfort, that 
the contract has, by the mistake of a puzzled old domestic, been made of 
the firmest nature. He at length, with some. difficulty, braces up his 
resolution, and waits on_ her toilette, while the old lady is changing her 
marriage costume. To his surprise he observes a singular improvement in 
her appearance as she gets rid of her dress of ceremonial. ‘The improve- 
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