HOPACE SMITH'S last novel has furnished the subject of a
domestic tra:ydy at the Adelphi, of which Mrs. YeTes is the heroine, Jane Lwoo.e. The principal incidents of the story are strung together in a ine,igre and disjointel manner, and interspersed with two or three s.' flee of broad fante, having not the slightest connexion with the plot, hut serving te re:i eve the tedium of the horrors. Jane Lomax induces her husband to neese a will of a rich and eccentric old German who ledges with them, on the plea of providing for their only child, an nil- iv : he sulistittites his own name fbr that of the old German's esphese. ;Ind they inherit the property ; but the child dies, his mother gou., 1w:a :It his the husband's guilt is detected, and the right heir g's his own. These materials, it' well wrought up, would have made an etre:tare melodrama as it is, Mrs. YATES'S really fine acting, though powerfully affecting in the last scenes, has to contend against the feeble interest of the drama, arising from its want of continuity and probabi- ft.:. :nal the bald dialogue. The 'Scenes where she justifies the crime t.) elf, and persimdes her hushand, thiled for lack of sufficient mo- tive: her guilty terror when she steals the will, her exultation after- wards, and her contempt for her husband's pusillanimity, had not scope enough for thele menifestation in the scene where she is told to prepsse for the &Ali of her child, the anguish of the (loafing mother, height...m:0i to tofture by a sense of the fruitlessness of her guilt, but -calmed by a despairing effort to cling to her only hope, is portrayed with painful intensity ;and the mixture of wild levity and unutterable wo in her madness is fearfully. real.
Lvox, as the husband, exhibits the weakness of the character and the horrors of remorse with considerable skill. The old German is Ladly personated. Mrs. Enemr as a shrew of a wife, II. 11F:vcaLEv as the henpecked spouse, and 0. SMITH as an adventurer, who, in the disguise of a foreign daneing-master, makes cupboard love to the lady,
create a good deal of merriment : 0. So1 biographical sketch of his " illustriens house" is richly extravagant.
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