19 OCTOBER 1839, Page 15

At the Adelphi, VAN AMBURGII'S elephant is the attraction, pending

the production of a new piece, announced with all the mystery of a paragraph of fashionable intelligence, which is to employ all the re- sources of the theatre. The elephantine performer acquits himself with a gravity and. docility very edifying : though young, his bulk is quite sufficient to fill the stage, nevertheless he gives room for the bipeds to dance with the huge beast a pas de whale. Besides treating half-a-dozen young ladies to a ride upon his back, and devouring suc- cessive plates of fruit, washed down with a bottle of wine, with alder- manic gusto, ringing a bell for fresh supplies with peremptory ianpa- tience, lie counterfeits lameness, walks on his knees, gives a trumpet- blast with his flexible trombone, and holding the keeper on his tusks with his trunk, carries him round and round, and finally depositing hini on the ground, walks over Win repeatedly, picking his way with those paviour's rummers of legs as carefully as if he trode among glass bottles. It is certainly one of the most rational and inoffensive exhibitions of brute instinct, though out of place. Apropos of beasts. VAN AMIWRGII is outdone at Astley's by a Mr. CARTER, who drives a lion-gig, and plays dangerous pranks with a leopard on the open stage, besides romping with a large party of wild beasts in their private box.