best Theatres habitually paraded within the last twenty or thirty
years. From those remarks it might appear as though no such Manager
of Covent Garden or Drury Lane as Mr. Macready had ever existed.

It is a fact beyond all possibility of question, that Mr. Macready,
on assuming the management of Covent Garden Theatre in 1837, did
instantly set himself, regardless of precedent and custom down to
that hour obtaining, rigidly to suppress this shameful thing, and
did rigidly suppress and crush it during his whole management of
that theatre, and during his whole subsequent management of Drury
Lane. That he did so, as certainly without favour as without fear;
that he did so, against his own immediate interests; that he did so,
against vexations and oppositions which might have cooled the ardour
of a less earnest man, or a less devoted artist; can be better known
to no one than the writer of the present words, whose name stands at
the head of these pages.



LANDOR'S LIFE



Prefixed to the second volume of Mr. Forster's admirable biography
of Walter Savage Landor, {1} is an engraving from a portrait of that
remarkable man when seventy-seven years of age, by Boxall. The
writer of these lines can testify that the original picture is a
singularly good likeness, the result of close and subtle observation
on the part of the painter; but, for this very reason, the engraving
gives a most inadequate idea of the merit of the picture and the