wonderful authority on all matters connected with the drama, pointed out as notabilities. The critics were the most interesting persons in my eyes, and I stared at them with interest, and with some feeling of disappointment because they were so like ordinary mortals. I asked my neighbour what he thought of Mr. Turk West as an actor--when I mentioned the name of my friend, I consulted my playbill with the air of one to whom he was a stranger--and I learnt to my mortification that he had never heard of him. He did not seem to be very sanguine of the success of the new play or the new actor, and I was mean enough to agree with him. The title of the play was _Twice Wedded, or Torn Asunder_; and in due time the curtain rose for its introduction to the audience. I cannot undertake to describe it, for the reasons that a good deal of it was not heard, that the actors and actresses were imperfect in their parts, and that the story was so involved and mysterious as to baffle description. The heroine, it appeared, had been twice married--once, many years ago to Turk, who had been torn from his wife, for no assignable reason, on the wedding-day, and who was supposed to have died in battle (what battle, and why he went to battle, were not explained); and afterwards to a person whose identity I was not successful in discovering. Turk played two characters, an Irish servant and the first husband, who instead of dying in battle, as he should have done, had been confined in a madhouse, from which he had just made his escape. After a comic scene as the Irish servant, which was mildly tolerated by the audience, Turk came on in a high-peaked hat, a long cloak, and hessian boots, and hearing that his wife had married again, behaved in so mad a manner as to fully justify his long incarceration. Being a very short man, Turk's appearance in this costume was even in my eyes most ludicrous; no effort of imagination could have made a hero of him, and as (for the sake of contrast, I suppose, with his other character) he spoke in the most lugubrious tone, the audience went through various transitions of feeling. First, they were, as I have said, mildly tolerant; then they became impatient, then indignant, and then, there was something so really comic in the little man's despair, they hooted and laughed at him. Directly the feeling of derision came into play, even I knew that both Turk and his new and original drama were, in dramatic parlance, 'damned.' An unfortunate word which Turk used was taken up as a catchword by the audience, and they flung it at him with merciless enjoyment. They literally screamed with laughter when he was most serious, and even the critics threw themselves back in their seats and showed by their merriment (for critics are rarely merry) that they were tasting a new sensation. In vain the sticks rapped approval; in vain did Turk's friends endeavour to stem the current. The knowing man