THEATRICAL EXITS.
THE Olympic and the St. James's closed on Wednesday, their ex- tended season having terminated. The Adelphi shut prematurely, in consequence of the previous engagement of the company with the Surly manager. i
LISTON, it s said, has slid into retirement quietly, being too nervous to take a formal fitrewell. This is easily accounted for : he is the only person who cannot see LISTON act. We hardly know whether compas- sion for his deprivation or admiration of his talent ought to predomi- nate. But have we actually laughed our last at his humour? We can- not bring ourselves to think it.
Another veteran favourite, to whom the public have been indebted for many a hearty peal of laughter, is gone—dear, droll, old JOEY GRIMALDI is dead ! The lust time we saw him, he was sitting bent almost double, on a bench at the wing, wrapped up in a greatcoat, from which he emerged at night, as from a slough, the painted denizen of Pantomime and Fairy. land. What leaps be took ! what a cavern of a mouth he had, with India rubber jaws ! what unfathomable depth and boundless capacity were his pockets ! How intense was his relish for stolen morsels ! With what gusto be gashed Pantaloon across the calves, or slivered off his nose ! And when be spoke—rare occasion— it was as if all his faculties had overcome the law of his being to find utterance—dumbness found a tongue.
Poor GRIMALDI !—one of the very few humourists who wore the motley suit without blame—happy hadst thou been had thy son proved worthy to wear thy top.knot : as it is, thou art the last and the first of thy race. BARNES, thy comate in fun—tile best of Pantaloons—whotn thou bast cuffed and kicked so cordially Christmases out of number, and who now lingers in sickness and poverty, will die the sooner, perchance, for hearing of thy departure. The decrepitude he feigned so well is now but too real. He has passed beyond the Pantaloon on the stage of life, into the last age of all—insensible to aught, perhaps, except the wants he has not the means to supply. Of all the children of Thespis, these of the motley tribe enjoy the most short.lived stage existence : they disappear and lie dormant for months, like the moles underground—yet they must be fed the while. Their sorrows and necessities touch us beyond those of others ; and their fate more strongly points the moral of their profession.
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