"haute dans l'art dramatique comme mime excep❝tionel.

J'ai donné des représentations de pantomimes avec des exercices que personne n'a fait avant "moi dans les principales capitales de l'Europe, et qui ont obténu le plus grand succès.

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Apte à prendre la forme de l'animal le plus agile, chien, singe, ou chat, je suis parvenue même "à parâitre devant le public sous la forme d'une "mouche, et, comme ces capricieux volatiles, je par

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cœurs une salle de spectacle en tous sens. D'une bouquet de fleurs, je m'élance au ceintre de la salle, "et tourne autour du lustre en courant sur le

"Différens auteurs des pays que j'ai parcourus ont "composé pour mon genre special des pièces, des "farces qui ont produit partout un grand effet et "m'ont fait faire beaucoup d'argent. Je suis con

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vaincu, Monsieur, que ces pièces traduites et arrangées pour la scène Anglaise, et surtout pour le "théâtre que vous dirigez, dit-on, habilement, ob"tiendrait à Londres un succès de vogue. S'il

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vous convient donc de traiter avec moi, j'attendrai "votre réponse à Paris, cité Bergère, No 3.

“J'ai l'honneur de vous saluer,

"P.S.-Les pièces que je monte ne demandent "que peu de dépenses attendu, que j'ai toutes les "machines nécessaires à mes exercices."

CHRISTMAS SPECULATION.

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Mark the dwarf's expression, "le théâtre que vous dirigez, dit-on, habilement," as though he had suddenly dropped from the clouds, and heard by accident, by a mere " dit-on," of the management of the theatre! A few years ago this person used to haunt the stage-doors of Drury Lane and Covent Garden Theatres, and was occasonally taken up, on the sly, by some actor into the green-room, to favour the performers with specimens of his recitation in Richard the Third and other characters, his real name being Leech, instead of that of any travelled foreigner, and his father having been, if I remember rightly, attached in some menial capacity to one or other of these buildings. But the period of the year being near at hand when pantomime was to be put in full preparation, the manager was then, as he always is, subject to every species of application from professors of the marvellous, and he may consider himself a fortunate fellow if he escape even half the humbug that is attempted to be practised upon him. Rope-dancers, posture-masters, patent skaters, tumblers, strong men, flies, and fools of every description, tender their services for the celebration of this momentous event. Speculating on the chance of a pig, or a donkey, or live poultry, being required in the pantomime, and knowing that a shilling a night is paid for the use of such properties, it is no uncommon thing for a rogue to turn dealer in such articles, and rear them in the hope of realizing a nightly profit by them. Master Leech

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DEPENDENCE ON A PLAY-BILL.

betook himself to foreign parts, from the impossibility of exciting the wonder of his own countrymen ; and having formerly failed to do that, there could be no objection now to his testing their gullibility. And thus it is, that a London manager, to have any chance of escaping purgatory, must have his eyes and his ears unusually open, watched as he is in all directions, and with so few allowances made for the errors into which he too frequently and unintentionally falls.

The production of the Covent Garden pantomime this year was signalised by the enlistment of Mr. Stanfield in the cause of "the drama's restoration." We had better, to prevent mistakes, give the announcement of this national event in the words of Mr. Macready's own play-bill:

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"The manager of this theatre trusts the public "will not consider it a deviation from the rule uniformly observed by him, if, in announcing the en"tertainments prepared, according to established usage, for this season of the year, he acknowledges

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expressly, and particularly under the PARTICULAR "circumstances, his obligations to Mr. Stanfield. "That distinguished artist, at a sacrifice, and in a manner the most liberal and kind, has for a short period laid aside his easel to present the manager "with his LAST WORK in a department of art so conspicuously advanced by him, as a mark of the

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MR. STANFIELD'S LAST WORK

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"interest he feels in the success of the cause which "this theatre labours to support."

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"The

Considering the many learned heads that were at this time connected with the cabinet of Covent Garden Theatre, some purer specimen of the English language might have been drawn up; but that is, however, a secondary consideration, when so important a circumstance as it records is duly weighed, it being neither more nor less than this: Mr. Stanfield, desirous of aiding the cause Covent Garden Theatre was labouring to support, at a sacrifice and in a manner the most liberal and kind, painted a scene in the pantomime !" cause" the said theatre professed to support, was the advancement of the drama as a branch of national literature and art; and to uphold the national literature, Mr. Stanfield painted a diorama! Bravo, Messrs. Macready and Stanfield! The reader having been apprised of the apparent cause, may as well be let into the latent one, viz. that "the cause Mr. Macready was labouring to support," was to support himself by every principle of puff imaginable; and he knew of no better means of so doing (Shakspeare having failed in his hands) than engaging Stanfield in the painting-room-ONE latent motive: ANOTHER was, that hating me with his "heart's extremest hate," and imagining, from the circumstances connected with this scenepainter's secession from Drury Lane Theatre, that

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NOT HIS LAST WORK.

the said Stanfield had no holy love for me, he had thus the power of indulging in a double gratification. We will pass over the humbug of its being Stanfield's last work, until we come to his subsequent efforts in the same "cause," introduced in Henry V., and lay before our readers the rejoinder to so much nonsense which appeared in the Drury Lane playbills:

.

"The manager of this theatre does not intend on "the present occasion, particularly under the par"ticular circumstances,' to make any deviation from "the rule uniformly observed by him, in announcing "the entertainments prepared, of rendering every "pos-ible justice to the different artists engaged; "and although he does not think the painting a "few scenes in a pantomime 'particularly' calcu"lated to support the cause of the British drama "as a branch of literature and art,' he still begs to "state that those celebrated artists, the Messieurs "Grieve, have been some time past actively occu

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pied upon a new, grand, moving panorama, (of "which Mr. Grieve, senior, was a few years since "the inventor,) on an interesting national subject; "which the public will be delighted to hear, from "the high estimation in which the talents of "those gentlemen are held, is not to be their LAST "WORK!"

Two brighter bits of absolute rubbish cannot well be put in print, the features of which may be thus distinguished: one was the exhibition of as much