This hardly amounted to faint praise, a kind of encouragement Mr Buckstone owned had a very depressing effect upon him when he ranked among youthful aspirants to theatrical honours. ‘I was,’ said the comedian, ‘given by my manager a very good part to act, which being received by the public with roars of laughter, I considered that my future was made. A worthy vendor of newspapers, a great critic and patron of the drama, asked me for an order. On giving him one, I called the next day expecting to hear a flattering account of my performance, but was disappointed. Determined to learn what effect my acting had produced on him, I nervously put the question: “Did you see me last night?” to which he replied: “O yes.” “Well,” said I, “were you pleased?” And he again replied with his “O yes.” I then came to the point with: “Did you like my acting?” And he rejoined: “O yes; you made me _smile_.”’ A more appreciative critic was the lady who after seeing Garrick and Barry severally play Romeo, observed that in the garden scene, Garrick's looks were so animated and his gestures so spirited, that had she been Juliet she should have thought Romeo was going to jump up to her; but that Barry was so tender, melting, and persuasive, that had she been Juliet she should have jumped down to him. An old seaman after looking long at the picture of ‘Rochester from the River,’ cried: ‘Yes, that's it--just opposite old Staunton's, where I served my time--just as it used to look when I was a youngster no higher than my stick. It's forty years since I saw the old place; but _if the haze would only clear off_, I could point out every house!’ When M. Gondinet's _Free_ was produced at the Porte St Martin Theatre, a Parisian critic commended the playwright for rendering a good deal of the dialogue inaudible by a liberal employment of muskets and cannon; and then conjugated _Free_ thus: ‘I am free to go to the play; thou art free to be bored by the first act; he or she is free to be bored by act second; we are free to be bored by the third; you are free to be bored still more by the fourth and fifth acts; and they are free to stay away for the future.’ M. Gondinet's drama was seemingly as fitting a subject for the pruning-knife as the play of which Mark Twain, speaking for himself and partner, deposed: ‘The more we cut out of it, the better it got along. We cut out, and cut out, and cut out; and I do believe this would be one of the best plays in the world to-day, if our strength had held out, and we could have gone on and cut out the rest of it.’