LETTER XXVI.

TO THE SAME.

I REMEMBER when Kean, in the first flush of his reputation, announced his intention of spending Passion-week in Edinburgh, to have seen a paragraph extracted from a Scots newspaper, in which this circumstance was commented on in a way, that I could scarcely help regarding as a little ridiculous. I cannot recall the exact words; but the northern editor expressed himself somewhat in this style" We are happy to hear it rumoured, that the celebrated new actor, Mr Kean, proposes making his first appearance on our boards during the approaching holidays. He no doubt feels much anxiety to have the favourable opinion of the London public confirmed and sanctioned by the more fastidious and deli

cate discrimination, which, as all the sons of Thespis are well aware, belongs to the enlightened and refined, although candid and generous, audience of our metropolis."

What the measure of Mr Kean's anxiety on this occasion might really have been, I possess no means of learning; but from all that I have seen and heard of the Edinburgh audience, I must confess I do not think, were I myself an actor, their favourable verdict would be exactly the crowning and finishing grace, for which I should wait with any very supernatural timidity of expectation. That they should for a moment dream of themselves as being entitled to claim weight and authority, equal (to say nothing of superior) to what is claimed and received by the great audience of the British capital-this is a thing, at the first glance, so superabounding in absurdity, that I could scarcely have believed it to be actually the case, unless, from innumerable little circumstances and expresssions which have fallen under my own observation, I had been compelled to do so. How old this ridiculous prejudice of self-complacency may be, I know not; but I suspect that it, like many other ridiculous prejudices of the place, has been fostered

and pampered into its present luxuriant growth by the clamorous and triumphant success of the Edinburgh Review. Accustomed to see one or two of their fellow-citizens sitting in undisputed pre-eminence above all the authors of England, it must have seemed a small matter that they themselves should claim equal awe from the actors of England, when these ventured to think of strutting their hour on this side of the "Ideal Line." -However this may be, there is no doubt the notion does exist, and the Edinburgh audience bonâ fide consider themselves as the most polite assemblage of theatrical critics that the world has produced since the days of Athens. I think Aristophanes, could he look up and see them, would observe a very sad change from his own favourite σε σοφωτατοι θεαται.”

There is no doubt, that the size of such a theatre as the Edinburgh one is much more favourable to accuracy of criticism, than a house of larger dimensions can be. It is somewhat larger than the Hay-Market; but it is quite possible to observe the minutest workings of an actor's face from the remotest parts of the pit or the boxes; and the advantages, in point of hearing, are of course in somewhat the same measure. The house, however, has newly been

lighted up in a most brilliant manner with gas, and this, I should think, must be anything rather than an improvement, in so far as purposes truly theatrical are concerned. Nothing, indeed, can be more beautiful than the dazzling effect exhibited, when one first enters the house-before, perhaps, the curtain is drawn up. The whole light proceeds from the centre of the roof, where one large sun of crystal hangs in a blazing atmosphere, that defies you to look up to itcircle within circle of white flame, all blended and glowing into one huge orb of intolerable splendour. Beneath this flood of radiance, every face in the audience, from the gallery to the orchestra, is seen as distinctly as if all were seated in the open light of noon-day. And the unaccustomed spectator feels, when his box-door is opened to him, as if he were stepping into a brilliant ball-room, much more than as if he were entering a theatre.

But the more complete the illumination of the whole house, the more difficult it of course must be to throw any concentrating and commanding degree of light upon the stage; and the consequence, I should think, is, that the pleasure which this audience now derive from looking at each other, is just so much taken

from the pleasure which, in former times, they might have had in looking at the performers, There is nothing more evident, than that the stage should always be made to wear an appearance in all respects as different as possible from the rest of the theatre. The spectator should be encouraged by all possible arts to imagine himself a complete eaves-dropper, a peeper, and a listener, who is hearing and seeing things that he has no proper right to hear and see. And it is for this reason, that I approve so much of the arrangement usually observed in the French, the German, but most of all in the Italian theatres, which, while it leaves the whole audience enveloped in one sheet of dim and softened gloom, spreads upon the stage and those that tread it, a flood of glory, which makes it comparatively an easy matter to suppose, that the curtain which has been drawn up was a part of the veil that separates one world of existence from another. In such a theatre, the natural inclination every one feels is to be as silent as possible as if it were not to betray the secret of an ambush. The attention, when it is drawn at all to the stage, is drawn thither entirely; and one feels as if he were guilty of a piece of foolish negligence every moment he removes his gaze

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