The original Don Ctesar de Bazan, as embodied by Frederick
Lemaitre, is a very different personage from any of the English Don Ciesars: it is a complete and consistent caracter, conceived as a whole, and presented in its different phases in five acts. &manes Don Cassar is not only a dis- solute and reckless cavalier, but a Spaniard and a nobleman: his gayety is saturnine his energy has an air of indolence, and he graces the rags of the prodigal with the manner of a gentleman. He looks the profligate sated with pleasure, and depraved by excesses; who has dissipated strength, spirits, and fortune, by a long career of vice, and seems ready to fling away the life he has rendered worthless: his levity is not joyous, but melancholy; and his impulses are fitful and desperate. Lemaitre's first appearance is very striking: his soiled and tattered snit is scarcely hidden by a faded cloak, its ample folds held up as if on a peg by a long rapier, and his muddled brow veiled by a shapeless slouched hat, its broken feather dangling over his eyes: his very stagger has a dash of style—he is literally "drunk as a lord." In prison and in his sober senses, with death staring him in the face, he rouses from his oblivious state, and shows some signs of returning self-respect; and when he has donned the court suit of a Spanish grandee he resumes the dignity of his rank: saluting his bride of a minute with stately courtesy, and receiving the bearer of his sentence of death with formal obeisance. In the subsequent scenes the alternations of feeling and manner are less strongly marked, but traceable nevertheless: his ardour and gallantry in pursuing his bride and defending her honour an characterized by calmness, decision, and address. Had Lemaitre been younger, we fancy he would have thrown greater ardour and elasticity into the part, and have concealed more completely the artifice of the player: but as it is, his performance is of surpassing excellence: it is a study for our actors, and a high gratification for playgoers. Mademoiselle Cladsse is not suited to the part of Montana; but her acting in the pathetic scenes is touching. The rest of the characters are well supported; and the cos- tumes are superbly characteristic.
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