The Merry Monarch's world is too much with us. I can't imagine what it is in that period that our actor-managers find so peculiarly appropriate to present conditions, when we need all the inspiration we can get out of our country's annals. It seems only the other day that in the same theatre, His Majesty's--the play was _Mavourneen_--I was assisting at a rout (is that the word?) of Restoration society. And here we have it all over again with the same scheme of a pretty _debutante_ near to being compromised by the Royal favour; with the old galaxy of Court ladies inexplicably gay; the same old Duke of BUCKINGHAM; the old dull sport of improvisations; the old pathetic lack of wit; a _rechauffe_ only tempered by slight variations, such as the substitution of LELY for PEPYS, and the failure of the Monarch himself to put in an appearance. For the rest, a generous allowance of swashbuckling, of kidnapping, of standing and delivering, of interludes for dancing and gallantry--in a word all the approved features of the High Toby. Nothing, you will guess, that threatened to overstrain our intelligence, but enough for the moderate excitation of those sympathies which we always concede to heroic villainy. The _clou_ of the evening was the scene of the waylaying of his lover's coach by _Claude Duval_ on the Newmarket road. Animals on the stage (as distinct from the circus-ring) always make me nervous. Mr. BOURCHIER seemed to have anticipated my apprehension. On the approach of the travellers, having hitherto, with his horse's consent, sat motionless at the cross-roads, he retired with it into the wings and there dismounted and continued the scene on foot. But the memory of those few moments of superb equitation remained with the audience, and when, at the fall of the curtain, he led his steed forward by the bridle (a just tribute to its connivance) the pair of them brought down the house--and not the scenery, as I had feared.