THE THEATRES.

WITHIN Something like a month, and after a pause which threatened to be perpetual, the theatres have re-opened in every direction-that is to say, in the North and in the West of the metropolitan district, for we ignore the other points of the compass.

Novelty has not as yet been the order of the day. Setting aside Sadler's Wells, where "Coriolanus" was brought out with new scenery and "appointments" (-what are they?), and the ballet of "Les Amazons," a rifacciamente of the "Revolt of the Harem," wherewith Mr. Bunn has been pleased to regale the patrons of Covent Garden, the motto, "Old Favourites," seems to have been inscribed on the managerial banners of the newly-opened theatres, at least, as far as the opening night is concerned.

Melpomene and Thalia may be said to have done nothing as yet, but to repose somewhat lazily on their Parnassus, dreaming, we trust, of the future, but not working creatively in the present. It is a tenth Muse, that has been especially busy since the summer-the muse of cleanliness -the muse who rather looks to the salle than to the stage of a theatre, and whose attributes ought to be a set of paint-pots, many penny-loaves, several reams of gold-leaf, and not a few yards of materials for hangings. Certainly all the houses in London look very pretty. Mr. Sang (auspice Manby) has worked up the Adelphi and the Haymarket to the acme of polychrome gaiety, freely realising those arabesque dreams, in which cupids, birds, and flowers, play as in a genial region, till their several natures become blended with each other. Sadler's Wells, in a quieter style than these two, with less unity of adornment, leaves the hands of the decorator fitted up in excellent taste; and the Princess's, though less elaborately redecorated, has a new ceiling, and has reaped the benefit of a thorough burnishing.

At present, (the word "present" signifying something like the 25th of October), the theatrical bill of fare for this large, grave, peaceful metropolis, is as follows :

At Covent Garden, in which some of the boxes of the "Royal Italian" are publicised, the dilettanti will find old operas unbrilliantly put on the stage, but with the advantage of Mr. Sims Reeves, unquestionably the best English singer. He will also find a ballet respectably put on the stage, and enlivened by the fascinating Mademoiselle Plunkett.

At the Haymarket, the lover of the drama will witness tragedies, with Miss Laura Addison and Mr. Creswick as the hero and the heroine. He will admire the energy and carefulness of the young lady, and he will offer a silent prayer that she may mend many faults in her style of delivery. Also the circumstance will be impressed on his mind that there are no better actors in the world than Mr. James Wallack, whom we rejoice to find entrusted with the stage management, Mrs. Glover and the two Keeleys, while he will indulge in pleasing anticipations respecting the return of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean.

At the Adelphi, Mr. Hudson, a lively delineator of Irish humour, with less unction than poor Power, is at present the ruling "star," and acts in Power's pieces.

The Lyceum is rendered attractive by Mr. Charles Mathews and Mr.

Harley, for Madame Vestris, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, and Mr. Buckstone have not yet appeared. In a finished representation of certain characters in the eccentric light comedy sphere, there is no actor in London who can approach Mr. C. Mathews.

At the Princess's, Mr. Charles Braham is creating no small sensation by the fine quality of his voice, and his approximation to his father's manner. The opera in which he sings, and which is composed by the mediocre Flotow, is common-place enough, though based on a pretty story of the "Giselle" kind. However, the voice of Mr. Braham, and the personal appearance of Miss Rafter, endow it with attractive power. A steady adherence to legitimacy distinguishes the excellent management of Sadler's Wells, where there is a good working company, and the mise en scène is most creditable. At Marylebone, there is no longer the old attachment to the "legitimate," save when the lovely Mrs. Mowatt steps in to the rescue of the ideal and the poetic.

The Olympic, which opened in the course of the summer, is working steadily with dramas of domestic interest, in which there is some very good acting by Mrs. Stirling and Mr. Leigh Murray.

The general aspect of theatrical affairs does not, indeed, present many striking features, but on the whole the prospect is hopeful. Even the general renovation of the theatres-this painting of ceilings and boxpanels-is a healthy indication of the determination of managers to put their best foot forward, though we would warn them against imagining that a newly-painted salle allows of a relaxation of energy with respect to the productions on the stage. The number of decidedly great actors is now-a-days very small; but the theatres at present open may, with proper management, become the foci of several working companies. Sadler's Wells, a theatre not of five years' standing, and starting with a good name or two, has succeeded in forming a very efficient troop for its purpose out of a material previously unknown to London. Who, some years ago, had heard of Mr. Scharfe, Mr. Hoskins, and, we might almost add, Mr. A. Younge? Yet all these gentlemen have proved themselves very available personages, and, if engaged in legitimate work, are pretty sure of pleasing the audience before whom they perform. The Keans and the Keeleys are a sufficient basis to make the Haymarket a prominent temple of the higher tragic and comic muse; while, for the purposes of strong melodrama and broad farce, there could scarcely be a more efficient corps than that of the Adelphi, if a good man could be found for the serious hero. The best hero of domestic serious drama is, unquestionably, Mr. Leigh Murray, of the Olympic, who has voice, figure, and manner, all in his favour, and he, with Mrs. Stirling, Mr. F. Vining, Mr. Emery, and Mr. Compton, may easily form a little nucleus of talent at the Olympic-if, indeed, the situation of that theatre is not too strong a counteraction to all exertion. Vaudevilles, and the more elegant burlesques, can be done at the Lyceum as they can be done nowhere else. The company, to which Mrs. Yates is now added, is complete of its kind, and no managerial taste can be compared with that of Madame Vestris and Mr. Planché, as far as stage-decoration is concerned.

The great point with each house should be to acquire for itself a character of doing some specific class of work. A perpetual change in the class of performances at any one establishment is destructive to the functions of a company, and must ultimately reduce a theatre to insignificance.

LITERARY NOTICES.

THE TWO BARONESSES.*

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN has a great advantage over writers of fiction in this country. His narrow wood-grown islands-" rose branches cast into the water,"-his fishing villages and quaint inhabitants, his old manor-houses, and his legends of land and sea are perfectly new to us; whereas our own battle-fields, castles, manor-houses, hamlets, and huts have for the greater part been ransacked in the search for legendary lore. So it is also with the chivalrous chronicles of France and the traditions of the Rhine. They have been wrought, both by our own and by continental authors known to us by languages that are familiar to many. Not so the languages of Scandinavia. They are as little generally known as the country itself, and it is only within these few years that Berzelius, Oersted, Finn Magnusen, Rafn, Thorwalsden, Andersen, Jenny Lind, and other gifted Northerns have brought their country into the circle at once of European science, learning, literature, and art.

But even were that not the case, Andersen would, by his own peculiar merits, rank high among living novelists. The simplicity of his style and manner is most commendable. His subject-matter also by no means attaches itself solely to lands and legends, previously unclaimed by the novelist. His eye is ever open to the poetical in every-day life; his descriptions of persons and characters are admirable; and, to use his own words, he has always in view to solve the poet's true problem, "by pointing to the invisible thread which in every person's life signifies that we belong to God; by letting us see the peculiarities in the nature of ourselves, our family, and in mankind; by finding the impress of God, even where it is hidden under the fool's dress, or the beggar's rags."

The open-boat, the Northern Sea, to which our terrors, far more than our sympathies incline-and the three young students of noble parentage, Count Frederick and Barons Holgar and Herman, with their tutor-student Moritz; make an agreeable introduction to what are in reality throughout as much a series of sketches as a continuous story. Then the ruinous old manor-house, in which they are obliged to seek shelter, the poor organ-grinder's wife dying in child-bed in one of its crumbling apartments, and the drawing lots as to who shall father the orphan daughter, Elizabeth, and the heroine of the story, partake at once of the touching and the humorous.

But these introductory scenes are eclipsed by a character that could not be met with in all countries-that of the Baron Herman's grandmother. Her early history had been strange; her subsequent conduct was always eccentric. The proprietor of the estate where this original grandmother lived-her father-in-law-had been one of the most barbarous men of his time, and that, too, when the lot of the peasant in Denmark was truly deplorable.

The Two Baronesses. A Romance. In three Parts. By H. C. Andersen. 2 vols. R. Bentley, New Burlington-street, London.

An opening was still shown in the gateway where the peasant was let down into what they call "the dog's-hole." The damps from the moat penetrated through the walls below, and in wet seasons the floor was covered with mud and water, in which the frogs and water-rats gambolled at will: here they let the peasant down, and why? Often because he could not pay what was imposed on him for the miserable farm, which the proprietor had ordered him to take, and on which the peasant's little inheritance was expended. The Spanish cloak, which many an honest man had been compelled to bear, still lay in the tower; and in the centre of the court-yard, where there was now a fine grass-plot and Provence roses, once stood "the wooden horse," on whose back the peasant had often sat, with leaden weights fastened to his legs, until he became a cripple, whilst the baron sat in his hall and drank with his good friends, or flogged his hounds so that they howled in rivalry with the rider in the yard.

One of the latter, who had saved a little money, and therefore became obnoxious to his lord, was placed across that old implement of punishment, the wooden horse, his wife standing by, her eyes filled with tears, while a little girl, three years of age, and beautiful as an angel, tried to push a stone under her father's foot, but the baron observing what was passing, struck the child with his great ridingwhip, and kicked her mother. So dark a scene of her childhood lived in the memory of this old woman, long after she herself had become a baroness; for this child, so brutally chastised for sympathising with her father's torture, became in time the wife of the baron's son. And long after that, and after little Elizabeth had grown up to be a girl five years old, as the protegée of the baroness, she used to frequent a mysterious chamber, that was always kept locked, once in the year, on the anniversary of the day on which her father had ridden on the wooden horse.

There, between four walls was inclosed the mystery of the house, and the whole neighbourhood: and this was often and often spoken of amongst the servants; little Elizabeth had frequently listened to all this, and when they least imagined it, had sat and thought about it.

Some said that there was nothing in the chamber but a pair of wooden shoes and a milking-pail, which her ladyship herself had worn and carried when she was a poor peasant-girl, and which on the occasion of her visits, she put on, saying,

"So I was, and so I am now!"

Others said that she concealed a little man there in a bottle, who told her every thing that was to happen during the year.

Elizabeth thought of nothing else but to get into this chamber and see what was there. To effect this purpose, she took the key out of the little casket in which it lay the night previous to the anniversary, but having got into the room, her light blew out, and the door shut so that she could not open it from the inside, so that she had to remain in the mysterious chamber all night, till the grandmother came in the morning on her annual visit; and she saw the horse that "long Rasmus" had ridden all mouldering before her, and above the portrait of the barbarous baron, upon which the old baroness spat in contempt. But the little girl, who by changes of fortune somewhat similar to what had attended upon this strange old lady was destined to be wife of Herman and the Second Baroness, was expelled the house for her improper curiosity.

Count Frederick and Holgar are, in the meantime, both fascinated by

a beautiful young lady, whom they meet in the great saloons of court, and at court balls; but Holgar loses the fair Clara by the peculiar circumstances of a button giving way, while Count Frederick carries off the prize. It will be seen from this, that Andersen's sketches of common life are rather more successful than his incidents of high life. The latter also sometimes convey no small amount of information in regard to the habits and manners of his countrymen. Witness the following:

The honest old clerk was called Mr. Katrineson; and by the name we may understand that he was from the little island of Oro, where the unusual custom exists, that the sons generally take their mother's name, when she has been well known as a clever woman. Thus the clerk was called Katrineson after his mother, whose name was Katrine. His wife was also from Oro, somewhat younger than her husband, of a very lively disposition, and highly industrious : it was particularly on account of this last quality, that Madame Krone was fond of her. Madame Katrineson made excellent soup of hips and elderberries; her tea was native manufacture, a composition of marsh marigolds and millefoil. Her coffee was mixed with chicory root from the fields, and cleared with dried flounder-skin. No one had better starch than she had; the potatoes were riven on the grater, and the refuse was washed again and again, until the white starch lay on the linen to be bleached in the sun.

Andersen is as successful in the pathetic as in the simple and humorous. The tutor student Moritz had been long engaged to a maiden of good but rather eccentric character, Caroline by name, and Moritz's sister's son, a boy four years of age, had been left in charge of Caroline, previous to her marriage with Moritz, which was to take place soon, as the tutor student has just got a living at Halligers, on the coast of Sleswig, and he was on his way to claim his beloved bride.

Two evenings before his arrival the little boy was taken ill, very ill, and Caroline sat up with him, and nursed him ; she was unceasing in her attentions to him. The doctor could not as yet say what ailed the child. He would always have Caroline with him; she sat up with him again the next night: it was typhus. The doctor had just pronounced this to be the child's illness when Moritz arrived. He was to remain some weeks, then the marriage was to take place, and directly afterwards he was to depart with his fair bride to the Halligers, by the foaming Baltic. The joy of meeting was mutual; they were both afflicted on account of the little boy, whose mother was absent, and whose only joy he was.

The child's bed stood in Caroline's chamber, for she could not leave the sick boy; she also was attacked, and lay suffering when they bore the little child, as a corpse, out of the chamber.

Moritz had come with his heart full of summer's pleasures; for months and weeks these days had shone before him as days of happiness, and now he sat beside-perhaps a death-bed. It was a wet, raw night, one of the coldest that the autumn had yet brought with it; the windows stood open, and the little dead boy lay in an adjoining room. Caroline had fallen asleep with her head on Moritz's arm; he could not find in his heart to withdraw it, although it pained him. Her long hair had fallen down over her forehead, and a hectic flush stained her cheeks. It was quite still, and in the middle of the night, when the door of the room in which the little dead boy lay sprang suddenly open. At any other time there would have been nothing striking in it; the door had often sprung open in this way, but that it should occur this night was somewhat strange. The lamp was placed so that the light should not fall on the face of the sufferer, and it now cast its whole light on the face of the dead child, which lay there clothed in white, and with a wreath of flowers around its head. Caroline opened her eyes at that moment, and gazed on it. "Yes, I knew well that he was dead," said she, in a low voice. "I shall also die, but

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