The appointment of colored postmasters in Maryland may be all very well;
but PUNCHINELLO would like to know whether the Post-office authorities
intend to revive the custom of Blackmailing.

* * * * *

THE PLAYS AND SHOWS.

[Illustration: C]

Comedy personified, in Mr. CLARKE, has now reigned at BOOTH'S for nearly
six weeks. During that time there has been a perceptible change in the
metaphorical atmosphere of the house. The audience no longer wears the
look of subdued melancholy which was once involuntarily assumed by each
mourner for the memory of SHAKSPEARE, who passed the solemn threshold.
The ushers no longer find it necessary to sustain their depressed
spirits by the surreptitious chewing of the quid of consolation, and are
now the most pleasant, as they were always the most courteous, of their
kind. Persons have even been heard, within the past week, to allude to
BOOTH'S as a "theatre," instead of a "temple of art;" and though the
convulsions of nature which attend the shifting of the scenery, and
cause castles to be violently thrown up by volcanic eruptions and
forests to be suddenly swallowed by gaping earthquakes, impart a certain
solemnity to the brightest of comedies, still there is a general
impression among the audience that BOOTH'S has become a place of
amusement. And in noting this change PUNCHINELLO does not mean to jeer
at the former and normal character of BOOTH'S. BEETHOVEN'S Seventh
Symphony, DANTE'S Inferno, JEFFERSON'S Rip Van Winkle, and EDWIN BOOTH'S
Hamlet are not amusing, but it does not follow that they are therefore