'And smooth success be strew'd before thy feet.'--ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. AT the close of the late summer season, at the Park Theatre, a young lady from Massachusetts, of about the age of eighteen years, made her 'first appearance on any stage,' as the play-bills phrase it, in the character of 'The Wife of Mantua.' We learn from authentic sources, that this was by no means the ordinary case of a stage-struck-heroine, gratifying a long-indulged desire to dash upon the boards, with the fond anticipation of achieving immortal renown at a stroke. Nor was it necessity which drove the _débutante_ to the choice of a profession, in which every department is so full of toil, and often of unrequited labor and suffering. Of good family, and having an excellent education, she was early smitten with the love of poetry, especially that of the better and the elder bards; and contracted a habit of reading aloud, which developed, gradually, the talent of expressive and forcible recitation, to a degree which astonished and deeply interested her friends. This talent, strengthened with her increasing knowledge of books and its exercise, led her to think of the histrionic profession as one congenial with her feelings, and enabling her to give such utterance to her appreciations of her favorite poets, as would gratify her own ambition, and that of her friends for her. But of the stage she knew literally nothing, even when this idea found a place in her imagination. She had seen only two or three plays performed, and had gleaned no lessons in the art from any fields but those of her own mind and fancy; and from these, we are happy to predict, she will yet reap an abundant harvest of success and renown. Having taken some lessons in 'stage business' of one of the most accomplished actresses on the Park boards, and recited some passages, as a specimen of her powers, in the presence of the manager, she was permitted a trial, and chose the night of Mr. Chippendale's Benefit for her _début_. She had never seen the character she was to appear in performed, and never fully rehearsed the part, until the very day she came out: and even then, it was hastily rehearsed, and with reference less to the language than the positions, attitudes, etc., of the different characters. Thus, and thus only prepared, she came before a crowded house, to make her first attempt.