This piece is interesting, not because it is cleverly constructed (for it
is not), nor because _Mr. Titmouse_ dyes his hair green with a barber's
nostrum, nor on account of the cupboard court of _Nisi Prius_, nor of the
charity children, nor because Mr. Wieland, instead of playing the devil
himself, played _Mr. Snap_, one of his limbs--but because many of the
scenes are well-drawn pictures of life. The children's ball in the first
"epoch," for instance, was altogether excellently managed and _true_; and
though many of the characters are overcharged, yet we have seen people
like them in Chancery-lane, at Messrs. Swan and Edgar's, in country
houses, and elsewhere. The suicide incident is, however, a disgusting
drawback.

The acting was also good, but too extravagantly so. Mr. Wright, as
_Titmouse_, thought perhaps that a Cockney dandy could not be caricatured,
and he consequently went desperate lengths, but threw in here and there a
touch of nature. Mr. Lyon was as energetic as ever in _Gammon_; Mrs. Yates
as lugubrious as is her wont in _Miss Aubrey_; Mrs. Grattan acted and
looked as if she were quite deserving of a man with ten thousand a year.
As to her singing, if her husband were in possession of twenty thousand
per annum, (would to the gods he were!) it could not have been more
charmingly tasteful. The pathetics of Wilkinson (as _Quirk_) in the
suicide scene, and just before the event, deserve the attention and
imitation of Macready. We hope the former comedian's next character will
be Ion, or, at least, Othello. He has now proved that smaller parts are
beneath his purely histrionic talents.

Mr. Yates did not make a speech! This extraordinary omission set the house
in a buzz of conjectural wonderment till "The Maid of Honour" put a stop
to it.