The newest wonder at the Adelphi, and the greatest, (the
elephant excepted,) is the Giant—no pasteboard structure of mask and raised shoe, but a bona Ale flesh and blond giant, his own two feet taller than ordinary mortals. The Giant V PoLdine is quite as extraordinary as the Gnome Fly, and reaches as sublime a height. Hiatvio NANO, the dwarf, crawled along the proscenium—Monsieur Minx, the giant, seems in danger of knocking his head against it : the Fly flew over the chasm in the stage—the Giant might stride across it, or make a bridge of his body for people to pass over. Monsieur MIEN is not a man run to seed— his bulk is proportioned to his height ; and his prowess gives proof that his display of muscle is not assumed: his head seemed to its rather small for his body—but that may be only the effect of viewing it in perspec- tive. YATES looks up to him ; and he is certainly tall enough to be the prop dile! theatre. In lighting with his adversaries, he literally "stoops to Conquer:" when he surprises Mrs. Ksa-A.Ey by coming behind her, she turns round, and sees—not a nee. but a girdle ;and looking up, and up, at last catches a glimpse of a head in the clouds, making the noise she took fbr thunder!
But. we are forgetting the piece itself while gazing at its stupendous hero. The dramatist, feeling that people would not be reconciled to the notion that such a pis id igy was of mortal birth, has.representsl him as the work uf an enchan zer ; and 0. Smell' fitly presides over lui.c " crea- tion." . The Giant first appears as a colossal statue ori it pedestal, (needless elevation l) wielding a scimitar like the blade of a seithe : he is then seen towering above the Paynim host " proudly eminent :" and he stands on the top of a hill, in glittering armour, like an icy peak of the Alps—scattering his assailants with as notch eas, as if he thing about stones instead of men : and in the last scene,- where be vanquishes single-handed twelve athletic at once, the dog Billy among the rats never did *greater execution—we really felt for the poor fellows tossed up and dashed on the ground. • By the way, the grim Saracen would look still more formidable were be to hide his smooth, short crop of hair, beneath a tangled mass of flowing locks. Notwithstanding Godfrey of Bouillon, Childe Roland, and the En- chantress Amide figure in the drama,—which is taken from no meaner source than TARS°, though properly disguised so as to escape recog- nition.—we quite overlooked the ordinary mortals, being wholly ab- sorbed in the contemplation of the supernatural personage : even the fair Armida failed to fascinate, though, in order to place her on a level with the giant she was brought in upon men's shoulders. As nothing short of magic influence could lay such a hero low, he dies of a wound by an enchanted javelin, Si) fine that be does not feel it, hut requires " the cue " to give up the ghost ; and as he lies, the playbills that an- nounce him to be eight feet high sewn to speak truth. The Giant ought to draw houses—be is strong enough. What an improvement this is on the old state of things I Formerly, individuals who happened to be something above or below the ordinary human stature were doomed to perpetual incarceration in a locomotive prison ; if a giant, " cabin'd, cribb'd, confined," in a caravan not high enough to stand upright in, and where he must sleep doubled-up; if a dwarf, hung on high to take the air in a cage, to which Gulliver's box was a saloon : now, they are made heroes to whom the finest performers are fain to play second fiddle, and receive the applause of crowded theatres, instead of being stared at by gaping clowns at a country fair. So hang as Nature indulges in these freaks of fancy, the stage will never be at a loss for " stars." If DANIEL • LAMBERT had lived in the present day, he would have been brought out in a blaze of red fire at the Adelphi, in an " Apotheosis of Falstaff," or the " Fat Boy grown to Manhood."
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