312 
more turbulent voice during his first three 
or four years. It has at length begun to be 
modulated into an excellent and articulate 
tone. His acting was harsh and inanimate. 
He has learned better things, and is now 
among the liveliest players of the liveliest 
dramas. His performance of the lover in 
this farce is as spirited a compound of sol- 
dierlike sincerity, gentlemanly feeling, and 
gay burlesque as we have lately seen. 
One subject more of our not unwilling 
panegyric remains, the peasant-love of the 
old gardener, Louise. Mrs. Humby is a 
favourite with the audience from her singular 
featness of dialogue, pleasant archness of 
expression, and prettiness of face and figure. 
We have no actress who makes more of the 
insignificant supernumerary characters of 
those little dramas. She has the talent of 
saying the most piquant things with the 
dryest simplicity, and is always accurate, 
. lively, and amusing. We can scarcely un- 
derstand why both she and Vining, who is 
a good deal in her style, and an excellent 
and busiling stage intriguant valet, and 
coxcomb, should not be transferred to either 
of the winter theatres. They would un- 
doubtedly be popular. 
Miss Bartolozzi has'gone through several 
of the principal operas of this house with 
considerable efiect. She is young, well- 
looking, and evidently a carefully-taught 
singer. But she has some obvious defi- 
eiencies which will require both study and 
time to overcome. Her embarrassment on 
the stage may wear off by the habit of looking 
an audience in the face; but her stage ac- 
tion will require additional variety, expres- 
siveness and ease. Her voice is naturally 
powerful, and may yet be of the very first 
order, for its tone is fine and Italian. But 
it must cultivate flexibility, finish, and accu- 
racy, peculiarly in the higher parts of the 
scale. However, a few months may make a 
prodigious improvement. The debutante 
and the popular performer live in different 
elements, and when this showy, and certainly 
clever girl, shall have acquired the self-de- 
pendence of practice and popularity, she 
may be a highly-important acquisition to 
opera. 
This theatre has lost some of the principal 
public favourites since last season. In this 
we admit and allow for the difficulties of the 
management. The proprietor may be in- 
defatigable, as we entirely believe he is, in 
providing the best possible company for his 
stage ; while the actors are equally inde- 
fatigable in struggling for the largest pos- 
sible emoluments that they can contrive to 
extract from the manager ; or, if he grow 
wisely reluctant, from the curiosity, taste, or 
profusion of the Squiredom. 
Thus the bidding is raised on the theatre 
which has brought those performers into the 
public view, and thé manager of a single 
establishment, with but a quarter of a year to 
reimburse him for the necessary expendi- 
tures of a year, has to contend with the 
Monthly Theatrical Report. 
[Serr. 
whole pocket money of the provinces. Every 
play-going shilling in the range of the 
empire is in open conflict with his single 
purse, and the victory is, of course, soon 
decided by the weight of numbers. Thus; 
we have lost the poignant and lively per- 
formance of Vestris; Miss Tree has taken 
to flight with her beauty and her grace ; and 
Liston has, either in fastidiousness of the 
Summer Treasury, or in some other odd im- 
pulse of the most eccentric and amusing 
humourist of the stage, hid his pleasantry 
from us for the season. 
The ‘ Friends,” a little drama from the 
French, and well adapted by Mr. Lacy the 
violinist, has been popular for some time. 
The plot turns upon the rather repulsive 
conception of a love between a supposed 
brother and sister, and a real brother and 
sister. A young captain ofa privateer, who 
had saved a child from a wreck, brings her 
up as his sister, to avoid the indecorum of 
having a young stranger in his house. He 
becomes enamoured of her on her approach 
to womanhood ; but believing her attracted 
by another, and dreading that she would fly 
from his house at once, if she knew that she 
was living with only a benefactor, he refrains 
from the discovery. The captain (Cooper,) 
has for some years quitted the sea, and is 
now a merchant. His partner (Farren,) is 
the suitor to the presumed sister. The cap- 
tain sees a love scene between them, and in 
a fit of furious jealousy, quarrels with his 
partner, yet without developing his secret. 
The agitation which this quarrel excites, 
betrays to the sister that her fondness for 
her brother is of a more ardent kind than 
belongs to mere relationship. She is con- 
firmed in this alarming opinion by the ex- 
perience of her pretty little friend, (Mrs. 
Humby,) who is on the eve of matrimony, 
and describes the genuine passion in all its 
symptoms, with her usual naiveté. The 
high-minded and delicate girl is shocked by 
the involuntary crime, and instantly deter- 
mines to marry the suitor whom she had 
previously rejected. The captain is dis- 
tracted at this intelligence, and believing 
that all hope is at an end, reveals the secret. 
The heroine’s terror is suddenly turned to 
joy ; she acknowledges her passion, and 
yows to live and die with him. The sum- 
moned suitor now comes, but it is only to 
be rejected a second time. In the midst of 
his chagrin, the additional discovery is 
made that the captain’s bride is the suitor’s 
actual sister, supposed to have perished in 
the vessel in which his mother was lost 
returning to France. He is consoled by 
the discovery, and all are in raptures to- 
gether. 
There is in this slight story much more 
for the taste of the French stage than the 
English. Those equivocal relationships 
always excite an unpleasant feeling with us, 
and the mere possibility of brothérs and 
sisters falling in love with each other, bor- 
ders upon the disgusting. The heroine is 
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