The nearest approach to this diffusion of excellence is to be found on the French stage. A unity of purpose is visible in the whole company. The flunky who announces the countess’s carriage enters into the spirit of the scene, and is as completely the flunky, and nothing more, as Regnier is the marquis, and nothing less. But one man we possess on the English boards, who is very superior to Regnier and all his clan. Charles Matthews has more graceful ease, more untiring vivacity, more genial comprehension, than the very finest of the Parisians. For ninety-five nights he has held a hushed theatre in the most complete subjection to his magic art, and was as fresh and forcible on the last night of the course as at its beginning. Yet never once does he raise his voice above drawing-room pitch; no reliance has he on silver shoe-buckles or slashed doublets; he wears the same coat and other habiliments in which he breakfasts at home or dines with a friend. Never once does he point an epigram with a grimace, or even emphasise a sentiment with a shrug of his shoulders. The marvel is how the effect is created; for there is no outward sign of effort or intention. That the effect is there, is manifest from pit to gallery; and yet, there stands a quiet, placid, calm-eyed, pleasant-mannered, meek-voiced, bald-headed, gentlemanly stockbroker, with respectable brass-buttoned blue coat and grey trousers, such as is to be seen on any day of the week pursuing his way from St John’s Wood or Brompton; and, at first sight, as unfit for theatrical representation as the contents of his ledger for the material of an epic poem. But he is placed in queer and unaccountable situations?—made intensely interesting by some strange instance of mistaken identity?—or endangered in life and fame by some curiously ingenious piece of circumstantial evidence? Nothing of the kind. The man is before you all the time. You know his whole circumstances as well as he himself does. He has a wife and daughter; he lives in a well-furnished capacious house—we should say in the upper part of Baker Street; and probably a brass plate reveals to the inquiring passenger that it is the residence of Mr Affable Hawk. That is his name: a merchant or stockbroker, at one time very honest and very rich; but his partner, a Mr Sparrow, has eloped with the co-partnery funds, leaving Mr Hawk’s affairs in inextricable confusion, and throwing him into the disagreeable necessity of living on his wits. He has a great and available capital, and lays it out to the best advantage. Never did wits so stand in the stead of money before. With them he pays off debts, with them he embarks in speculations, and on their security raises loans throwing seed in the stoniest places, and receiving a hundredfold. Nor is his triumph over a set of trustful spinsters, or persons unaccustomed to business. He does not live upon pigeons, but, like the lovers in Boccaccio, makes an excellent dinner on a sharp-beaked falcon. Mr