offence; but when, all as suddenly, the capricious and unreliable Powell abandoned the house in the Fields, and betook himself again to that in the Lane--the angry Lord Chamberlain sent a "messenger" after him to his lodgings, and clapped the unoffending Thespian, for a couple of days, in the Gate House. While Powell was with Betterton, the latter produced the "Fair Penitent," by Rowe, Mrs. Barry being the Calista. When the dead body of Lothario was lying decently covered on the stage, Powell's dresser, Warren, lay there for his master, who, requiring the services of the man in his dressing-room, and not remembering where he was, called aloud for him so repeatedly, and at length so angrily, that Warren leapt up in a fright, and ran from the stage. His cloak, however, had got hooked to the bier, and this he dragged after him, sweeping down, as he dashed off in his confusion, table, lamps, books, bones, and upsetting the astounded Calista herself. Irrepressible laughter convulsed the audience, but Betterton's reverence for the dignity of tragedy was shocked, and he stopped the piece in its full career of success, until the town had ceased to think of Warren's escapade. I know of but one man who has spoken of Betterton at all disparagingly--old Anthony Aston. But even that selfish cynic is constrained so to modify his censure as to convert it into praise. When Betterton was approaching threescore years and ten, Anthony could have wished that he "would have resigned the part of Hamlet to some young actor who might have _personated_, though," mark the distinction, "_not have acted it better_." Aston's grounds for his wish are so many justifications of Betterton; "for," says Anthony, "when he threw himself at Ophelia's feet, he appeared a little too grave for a young student just from the University of Wittenberg." "His repartees," Anthony thinks, "were more those of a philosopher than the sporting flashes of young Hamlet;" as if Hamlet were not the gravest of students, and the most philosophical of young Danes! Aston caricatures the aged actor only again to commend him. He depreciates the figure which time had touched, magnifies the defects, registers the lack of power, and the slow sameness of action; hints at a little remains of paralysis, and at gout in the now thick legs, profanely utters the words "fat" and "clumsy," and suggests that the face is "slightly pock-marked." But we are therewith told that his air was serious, venerable, and majestic; and that though his voice was "low and grumbling, he could turn it by an artful climax which enforced an universal attention even from the fops and orange-girls." Cibber declares that there was such enchantment in his voice alone, the multitude no more cared for sense in the words he spoke, "than our musical connoisseurs think it essential in the celebrated airs of an Italian Opera." Again, he says, "Could _how_ Betterton spoke be as easily known as _what_ he spoke, then might you see the Muse of