Of all these ‘The Deserted Daughter’ was received with the greatest applause, and it is perhaps the best of Mr Holcroft’s serious comedies. The characters of Mordent, of Lady Ann, and particularly of the faithful old servant, Donald, are drawn with great force and feeling. The character of Mordent is that of a philosopher, moralizing on the passions and vices of other men, and hurried away by his own. He has abandoned, or refused to own a daughter, the offspring of a former clandestine marriage, in order to avoid the sneers of the world, and the contempt of the rich and powerful connexions of his second wife. He maintains and brings her up as a natural daughter, but without seeing or acknowledging her. This the girl, who has a high spirit and quick sensibility, resents as an unmerited punishment; and determines either to be suffered to cast herself at her father’s feet, and for once receive his blessing, or to throw herself on the mercy of strangers. In consequence of this, she is decoyed into a house of ill fame, by one of the hoary priestesses of vice, under pretence of affording her employment at her needle; and here she is in danger of falling into the hands of one of Mordent’s profligate friends, who is himself accessary to the plot for carrying her off, at the moment that, by the indefatigable zeal of Donald, who had traced her to this abode of infamy, she is discovered to be his daughter. The scenes which follow this discovery are highly interesting; and through the whole of the character of Mordent, the conflict between a sense of duty, pride, and dissipation, is pourtrayed with strong touches of truth and nature. Cheveril is a lively, amusing character, and represents with a good deal of risible effect, one of those careless, good-natured young fellows, who would be thought ‘sad wicked dogs,’ but cannot prevail on themselves to do any harm.