In this brief survey of fourteen years, the absence of detail in many instances will be pardoned, we hope, on a reflection of what it may suggest. We are aware of the interest attaching to strength of companies, citations of casts, and notes of special performance; and in all theatrical histories such details should evoke the most careful consideration. The Philadelphia record, however, is not always full and clear on those points, as respects individual careers, even in one so active and fruitful as our subject's; for, so far as we know, there is no history of the stage of that city which pretends to do for its dramatic life what Ireland has done for the New York stage--regarding which monument of painstaking fidelity, William Winter, in the preface to his recent admirable volume on "The Jeffersons," truly says: "Every writer who touches upon the history of the drama in America must acknowledge his obligation for guidance and aid to the thorough, faithful and suggestive records made by the veteran historian, Joseph N. Ireland. "Yet, in depicting the career of a great actor, many things are rendered subordinate which in a history of the drama of any given period would receive due prominence. That the career of Burton in Philadelphia from 1834 to 1848 embraced much of its stage history during those years, will, of course, be understood; and we shall be sorry if our readers, at the same time, fail to discern the industry, sagacity, courage, and varied powers--with which the actor, author, and manager, illustrated those years--suggested by this recital. We now approach a period within the memory of many persons now living. Some few octogenarians may survive who can recall Burton's performances of over forty years ago; but they must be few indeed; and their recollections cannot be otherwise than dim and uncertain. But the achievements of Burton in Chambers Street; the unexampled popularity of his theatre; the unequalled company he gathered there; the indisputable creations of character that there originated; the birth of a revival of Shakespeare, with a felicity of conception that revealed the appreciative student, and with a beauty and minuteness of appointment unprecedented at the time;--all this, through a decade of years, forms an enchanting reminiscence vivid still in the retrospect of numberless New Yorkers. It is not surprising that we of the city of New York forget that the comedian so long belonged to Philadelphia. So brilliant was his success in Chambers Street that all other theatres where he flourished seem to be viewed by the reflected light of that; and we think there will be no question that there were clustered his rarest triumphs and there blossomed the flower of his fame. BURTON'S THEATRE, CHAMBERS STREET. _"There is the playhouse now, there must you sit."_ --SHAKESPEARE. BURTON IN NEW YORK. 1848-1856.