theatre. Once it was called the French theatre, and was devoted to the
witty comedies of SCRIBE, and the luxurious legs of OFFENBACH. But a woe
has been denounced against the SCRIBES and OFFENBACHS--(there is
considerable difference between the latter and the Pharisees)--of that
once gay theatre. Like many other French frivolities, it has lately
yielded to Teutonic tragedy. The cold and calculating German
"MEPHISTOPHELES" treads the stage where once tripped the light feet of
Parisian beauty. The burlesque Germans of the Grand Duchy of Gerolstein
have vanished before the grim and earnest countrymen of grand and simple
old King WILLIAM. It will be long before the French players find heart
to burlesque anew the German soldiery. It will be some time, let us
hope, before the German players at the Fourteenth Street theatre give
way to the shameless antics of French Opera-Bouffe buffoons.

PUNCHINELLO gives a glad farewell--with no thought of saying _au
revoir_--to the French follies that have given the French theatre so
unenviable a reputation; and he waves his pointed hat in joyful welcome
to SEEBACH and her German friends who have made the Fourteenth Street
theatre a temple of the classic drama. Like other places which can
properly be called dramatic temples, the theatre now partakes of the
solemnity of a religious temple. One goes to see SEEBACH, not to laugh,
but to test one's ability to suppress the desire to weep over the woes
of MARGARET, and to mourn with MARY STUART. Fortify yourself, O reader,
with a substantial dinner and much previous sleep, and come with me for
a night of German tragedy. Come to the Fourteenth Street theatre, not to
look back regretfully at departed opera-bouffe, but to SEEBACH. It is
with such reckless puns as the foregoing, that I endeavor to brace your
spirits for the exhausting struggle with six hours of tragedy played in
the most tragic and awful of modern languages. You are to hear _Faust_
in German. No man who has accomplished this feat can wonder at the