The dramatic capabilities of "Ten Thousand a-Year," as manifested in the
vicissitudes that happen to the Yatton Borough (appropriately recorded by
Mr. Warren in _Blackwood's Magazine_), have been fairly put to the test by
a popular and _Peake_-ante play-wright. What a subject! With ten thousand
a-year a man may do anything. There is attraction in the very sound of the
words. It is well worth the penny one gives for a bill to con over those
rich, euphonious, delicious syllables--TEN THOUSAND A-YEAR! Why, the magic
letters express the concentrated essence of human felicity--the _summum
bonum_ of mortal bliss!

_Charles Aubrey_, of Yatton, in the county of York, Esquire, possesses ten
thousand a-year in landed property, a lovely sister in yellow satin, a
wife who can sing, and two charming children, who dance the mazourka as
well as they do it at Almack's, or at Mr. Baron Nathan's. As is generally
the case with gentlemen of large fortunes, he is the repository of all the
cardinal virtues, and of all the talents. Good husbands, good fathers,
good brothers, and idolised landlords, are plenty enough; but a man who,
like _Aubrey_, is all these put together, is indeed a scarce article; the
more so, as he is also a profound scholar, and an honest statesman. In
short, though pretty well versed in the paragons of virtue that belong to
the drama, we find this _Charles Aubrey_ to be the veriest angel that ever
wore black trousers and pumps.

The most exalted virtue of the stage is, in the long run, seen in good
circumstances, and _vice versa_; for, in this country, one of the chief
elements of crime is poverty. Hence the picture is reversed; we behold a
striking contrast--a scene antithetical. We are shown into a miserable
garret, and introduced to a vulgar, illiterate, cockneyfied, dirty,
dandified linendraper's shopman, in the person of _Tittlebat Titmouse_. In