16 NOVEMBER 1850, Page 9

"Ecce iterum Crispinus!"—another aristocratic roué who carries off a girl

to his palace ! Louis de Male, Count of Flanders and hero of The White Hood, a piece produced at the Lyceum, surpasses all his predeces- sors not only in villany but in dulness. No wonder the citizens of Ghent and Bruges could not tolerate such sombre profligacy for a series of years, when an hour of it proved insufferably tedious even to a patient London audience. Why the opera of Le Chaperon Blanc, which was not effective at Paris even with Auber's music, should be put on the English stage, having first been rendered still less effective by the omission of the music, is a circumstance hard to explain.

A short fairy drama, called The Romance of the .Rose, is a more skeleton for the introduction of four tableaux, representing spirits of Air, Earth, Water, and Fire. The groups, with the machinery which makes them revolve, and which is similar to that employed in Madame Wharton's exhibitions, have been brought by MM. Alexander and Paul from Paris, where they created much sensation at the Theatre des Varietes. They are more elaborate than anything of the kind that has yet been seen ; and a plan for supporting flying figures without appearance of ropes is new and productive of illusion.