"Court and City" presents as pure a delineation of manners as a play
without incident can do--a truer one, perhaps, than if it were studded
with brilliancies; for in private life neither the denizens of St.
James's, nor those of St. Botolph's, were ever celebrated for the
brilliancy of their wit. Nor are they at present; if we may judge from the
fact of Colonel Sibthorp being the representative of the one class, and
Sir Peter Laurie the oracle of the other.

This nice adaptation of the dialogue to the various characters, therefore,
offers scope for good acting, and gets it. Mr. Farren, in _Sir Paladin
Scruple_, affords what tradition and social history assure us is a perfect
portraiture of an old gentleman of the last century;--more than that, of a
singular, peculiar old gentleman. And yet this excellent artist, in
portraying the peculiarities of the individual, still preserves the
general features of the class. The part itself is the most difficult in
nature to make tolerable on the stage, its leading characteristic being
wordiness. _Sir Paladin_, a gentleman (in the ultra strict sense of that
term) seventy years of age, is desirous of the character of _un homme de
bonnes fortunes_. Cold, precise, and pedantic, he tells the objects--not
of his flame--but of his declarations, that he is consumed with passion,
dying of despair, devoured with love--talking at the same time in
parenthetical apologies, nicely-balanced antitheses, and behaving himself
with the most frigid formality. His bow (that old-fashioned and elaborate
manual exercise called "making a leg") is in itself an epitome of the
manners and customs of the ancients.

Madame Vestris and Mr. C. Matthews played _Lady_ and _Lord Whiffle_--two
also exceedingly difficult characters, but by these performers most
delicately handled. They are a very young, inexperienced (almost
childish), and quarrelsome couple. Frivolity so extreme as they were