It is very pleasant for the rich people of Cincinnati to live in the lovely country over the hill, away from the heat and smoke of the town; but it has its inconveniences also. It is partly because the rich people are so far away that the public entertainments of the city are so low in quality and so unfrequent. We made the tour of the theatres and shows one evening,--glad to escape the gloom and dinginess of the hotel, once the pride of the city, but now its reproach. Surely there is no other city of two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants that is so miserably provided with the means of public amusement as Cincinnati. At the first theatre we stumbled into, where Mr. Owens was performing in the Bourcicault version of "The Cricket on the Hearth," there was a large audience, composed chiefly of men. It was the very dirtiest theatre we ever saw. The hands of the ticket-taker were not grimy,--they were black. The matting on the floor, the paint, and all the interior, were thoroughly unclean; and not a person in the audience seemed to have thought it necessary to show respect to the place, or to the presence of a thousand of his fellow-citizens, by making any change in his dress. The ventilation was bad, of course. No fresh air could be admitted without exposing some of the audience to draughts. The band consisted of seven musicians. The play, which is very pleasing and simple, was disfigured in every scene by the interpolation of what the actors call "gags,"--that is, vulgar and stupid additions to the text by the actors themselves,--in which we were sorry to hear the "star" of the occasion setting a bad example. Actors ought to know that when Charles Dickens and Dion Bourcicault unite their admirable talents in the production of a play, no one else can add a line without marring the work. They might at least be aware that Western colloquialisms, amusing as they are, do not harmonize with the conversation of an English cottage. Yet this Cincinnati audience was delighted with the play, in spite of all these drawbacks, so exquisitely adapted is the drama to move and entertain human beings.