Leaving the scenery to come to the acting, I may say that the play is generally well cast. Mr. MACLEAN and Mr. CHARLES COLLETTE are both very amusing, the first as _Camillo_, and the last as _Autolycus_, and Mr. GEORGE WARDE is quietly humorous with the baby. When I say quietly humorous, I do not mean that he trenches in the least on the ground occupied by either the Clown of Pantomime or the Clown of SHAKSPEARE. He does not sit upon the infant, or throw it about--no, nor even sing to it a little comic song. He gets all his effects by merely carrying it quietly about, and showing it, with an assumption of gravity that is killing, to Mr. FORBES-ROBERTSON. To turn to the less important characters of the play, Mr. DAVIES as a gaoler suggests that in "those days" prison officials were sometimes whatever happened to be the equivalent of the period to the modern "masher." Miss ZEFFIE TILBURY, Miss HELENA DACRE, and Miss DESMOND ("1st Lady with a song" and gigantic lyre) are all equally good, and even the subordinate female parts have efficient representatives. Returning to the gentlemen (a difficult task when it entails leaving such pleasant company) Mr. F. H. MACKLIN as _Polixenes_ is sufficiently robust in his manly bearing to suggest the necessary contrast with _Leontes_, and Mr. FULLER MELLISH is picturesque, painstaking and conscientious as _Florizel_. [Illustration: An Infant Phenomenon.] I began with Miss ANDERSON and (much to my regret) I must end with her. She is equally charming as _Hermione_ and _Perdita_. Her cry of horror and dead faint in the Hall of Justice on learning of the loss of _Mamillius_, is one of many points that profoundly impressed the audience, and in her comedy scene with _Polixenes_ in Act I, in which she asks him _à propos_ of _Leontes_, "Was not my lord the verier wag o' the two?" her smiling glance at her sombre lord is simply inimitable. I can quite fancy that _Leontes_ when he saw _Hermione_, and _Florizel Perdita_, must have talked of their condition (allowing for the loss of their hearts) as I describe myself when I assume the signature of ONE WHO HAS GONE TO PIECES. * * * * * A PLEA FOR THE BIRDS. (_To the Ladies of England._) [Illustration] Lo! the sea-gulls slowly whirling Over all the silver sea, Where the white-toothed waves are curling, And the winds are blowing free. There's a sound of wild commotion, And the surge is stained with red; Blood incarnadines the ocean, Sweeping round old Flamborough Head. For the butchers come unheeding All the torture as they slay, Helpless birds left slowly bleeding, When the wings are reft away. There the parent bird is dying, With the crimson on her breast, While her little ones are lying Left to starve in yonder nest.