“The Heart of Maryland,” though somewhat intricate in its story (only the main thread of which has been followed in the above recital), is compact in construction, fluent and cumulative in dramatic movement and interest, written with profound sincerity and contains passages of tender feeling and afflicting pathos. The “Curfew” expedient, if, in cool retrospect, it seems a little artificial, is, in representation, a thrillingly effective climax to an affecting portrayal of distress and danger. The first picture, exhibiting the ancestral home of the _Calvert_ family, an old Colonial mansion, deep-bowered among ancient, blooming lilac bushes and bathed in the fading glow of late afternoon and sunset light, was one of truly memorable loveliness. Indeed, the scenery investment, throughout, was of exceptional beauty and dramatic appropriateness, and the manifold accessories of military environment, with all “the proud control of fierce and bloody war,”--the suggested presence and movement of large bodies of infantry and cavalry; the denoted passage of heavy artillery; the stirring sounds of martial music and of desperate battle; the red glare and dun smoke-pall of conflagration, and the various employment and manipulation of light and darkness to illustrate and intensify the dramatic theme,--were extraordinarily deft in devisement and felicitous in effect. Belasco was also peculiarly fortunate in selection of the actors who performed the principal parts in his play. The handsome person and picturesque, romantic mien of Maurice Barrymore, who appeared as _Alan Kendrick_, were perfectly consonant with that character; John E. Kellerd gave an impersonation of remarkable artistic merit--true to life and true to the part--as the despicable yet formidable scoundrel _Thorpe_, and Mrs. Carter, profiting richly by the zealous schooling of her mentor, embodied _Maryland Calvert_ at first in a mood of piquant playfulness, veiling serious feeling, then with genuine, wild and intense passion. This was the cast in full of the performance at the Herald Square Theatre: