THEATBIS AND MUSIC.
There is more of the picturesque than the humorous in the last Ly- ceum novelty, entitled A Romantic Idea. A German student, sleeping for a night in a ruined castle to which a legend is attached, dreams of the per- sons he has seen during the day, who all appear as the different characters of the tradition. The visionary individuals, consisting of the family of a terrible baron, whose son the dreamer himself becomes, talk in a language that seems formed upon the burlesque tragedy of The Critic, but which is more comic from the grotesque acting of Messrs. Hall, Selby, and Roxby, than from any merit of its own. The student (Mr. C. Mathews) though he enters into the action of the dream, does not lose his original character; and the mixture of astonishment and nonchalance with which he sees all sorts of horrors, including three violent deaths, a conflagration, and a diabolical apparition, constitutes the drollery of the piece. In this little drama, which is by Mr. Planche, some ingenuity is dis- played in keeping up a sort of parallel between the position of the prosaic personages, whom the student has seen while awake, and that of the romantic characters in the dream, into whom they are subsequently trans- formed. But after all, the chief point of attraction is the beautiful scenery of Mr. Beverly; who, as usual, shows himself a first-rate master in his art.
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