But her variety lies al strictly within the bounds of

nature, At the same time that years have, in some things, given to Va- and her charms are such as it requires some cultivation of the lerie the shrewdness of the woman, her peculiar loi has, in others, taste to appreciate. The strokes she deals are too random and left her a child. This simplicity discovered itself in a way that fine to tell on a generation inured to deliberately planted hits ;• enraptured the house. Her lady cousin happens to boast herself the print is too delicate for eyes used to a text of unnatural dimen- jeune et jolie — " Joli e—dis mon cousine, quest-ee que c'est sions ; and there are no spectacles in this case to assist a defective que d'ihre johe ?" And then, with a look of child-like and

vision. bewitchine innocence, she offers herself for inspection — " et But however questionable may have been the triumph of ihe ac- moi, suis-je jolie ?" But this stroke was perhaps out-done tress in her laughter-loving characters, not a soul has been proof by another, when on an occasion of momentous interest, with

against her power in the heart-touching and tender. Valerie took an expression of eager intelligence but pure simplicity, she the audience on their vulnerable side ; and there was neither any suddenly turns to Henri, and demands if it was wrong to listen ; resisting, nor any shame in submitting to her. Each one turned —" Dites-moi, Henri, est-ce vial eine ct &outer Y" The return of

to his neighbour to read in his face the rapture that possessed him- her lover, who had absented himself solely for the purpose of stu- self ; and not a few seasoned hearts were surprised by an emotion dying under a celebrated oculist, inthe hope of one day being of which they had ceased to dream themselves susceptible. The able to restore Valerie to sight, substitutes for her former settled plaintive was so blended with the gay, and misery so sublimed by sorrow the liveliest emotions of joy.—" Parle—parle encore !"—she equanimity, that the closest breasts were unlocked, and the obdu- exclaims, when for a moment he interrupts himself to question

rate melted into tenderness. At times, the countenance of the her—"jai besoin de t' ezztendre."—The dreary history of the long,

actress was touched with ineffable sadness ; at times, the sadness long interval she had waved, to hear once more the welcome yielded to a smile yet more affecting, from the contrast it offered to sounds, was all comprised in this brief sentence. When Henri the mournful history so legible in the fixed and vacant eye. " 'Tis returns with the tale of his woes, to claim her ever ready sympathy, strange that death should sing," says some one in King John, when the vain effort to subdue her joy and reduce herself to a mood the dying monarch is heard singing in his delirium ;—it was strange proper for listening, was perhaps the finest stroke in the whole to see a'face bright as sunshine, under a brow where everlastine. performance :—" Quel dommage! je suis si heureuse.—Dites.snoe

dakness had settled. A quiet fortitude and kindly heart,. whicri rite votre chagrin." Something occurs to awaken suspicion of her yearning itself after a cherished long-lost object could yet sympa- lover's sincerity, and the dreadful sensation prompts to the overt

thise with others, were feelingly pourtrayed ; and pity was the more act of listening above alluded to. But what she overhears ha- profuse, that she, who moved it, seemed less disposed to claim nishes suspicion, and she breaks from her concealment, exclaim-

than to bestow it. ins, " tent d'amour—de generosate—alt .1 que j'etais coupable ! " The very first words she uttered, simple as they were, established This brought to mind that exquisite inece of acting in Miss F. H. her influence ; and she seldom spoke after, but some unconcioas Kelly's Juliet, when, after upbraiding Romeo to herself, the tide

expression, full of sad or affectionate meaning, upset the balance of her love, checked but for a moment, broke out into an ungo- of your feelings. She excuses herself to a friend for having made vernable burst of affectionate remorse—" 0, what a wretch was Ito

him wait ;—" Ce n'estpas ma faute ; je ne vais pas aussi rite que chide at him!" This is the finest thing that has been heard on the je le voudrais" The next attack was when, in a tone of mingled English stage since the time of Miss O'Neil ; and description sadness and kindness, she begged Henri to let her affectionate old cannot convey a juster sense of the merits of Mademoiselle Mars, guide finish his story—" Ce vieux serviteur aime i raconter ; je suis than the simple statement, that her acting in Valerie abounded in pauvre, je n'ai rien—je le pale en ecoutant." The old man recounts touches equally effective arid equally exquisite. how he had been afflicted with total blindness, and how a youngprac- The consummation of the piece is surely the greatest triumph

titioner at Paris, as generous as expert, had restored him to sight. the dramatic art ever achieved. The irruption of the light into

She muses on the story,—Iwas wondrous strange !—but, " malheu- her eyes, under the skilful hand of the tender operator, brings her reusement nous ne sommes pas il Paris, et ton ne jail, pas chez on the stage, exclaiming in a voice that electrified the house,— nous de pareils miracles." This was said in a manner so naive, " laissez-moi, laissez-moi; je vozs ! jevois !" And then falling on

and in a tone so exquisitely touching, as cut at once clear and her knees, this Ninon of sixty suffuses herself with all the loveliness straight to the heart. The ensuing conversation with Henri was of sixteen, under all the agitation of a cure beyond hope, and all the

replete, on her side, with the rarest touches of pathos. He con- ecstacy of a newly acquired sense—" Oui, c'est hi le jour—c'est la fides to her the secret of his love for the friend with whom she lumihre—c'est la vie! 0 mon Dieu—je te rends gnice—je sors lived ;—a love, he says, till that moment unknown to all the world— de maprison—J.EXISTEr " Excepte moi," she interposes ; whilst her broken accents and Admirable woman! such as heaven sends us once a century to looks of tender recollection intimated, that the source of her intelli- show what human creatures can be and do:

offices finds his guerdon in infinitely multiplying the objects of fence, as to what had passed in his heart, lay in her own. She interest, and creating delights unknown to that most isolated and had observed him to be silent, sad, averse to amusement, indifferent barren of' beings, the selfish man. to pleasure—" Alors j'ai reflechi—je me suis rappele . . ." He de-

clares his resolution to try what absence will do 1 °wards the conquest of his hopeless passion. Her heart, better informed, tells her how vain, FRENCH COMEDY—MARS IN VALERIE. in such a ease, is such a remedy ; and in her friendly anxiety to warn, Jr is difficult to describe the acting of Mademoiselle Mars, so as she unwittingly betrays to him the secret of her own superior inte.li- to convey even a faint idea of it to those who have not seen her. Erence—" Vous eloigner ! croyez-moi, mon ami—c'est un reauvais Applied to her, the customary and approved phrases of dramatic moyen; vous nel'oublierez pas, et vous serez plus malheureux." And C, iticism sound idly. The actress is seldom in your recollection, when, surprised at her agitation and suspecting the cause, he or, if you do think of her, it is only to wonder with Count Alma- asks if there was not some one far away, whom she . . . . her ea- viva, " comment les lemmas prennent Si vite et Si juste l'air et le gerness to evade the question, and the uncontrollable emotion, ton des circonstances." The audience listen to her as to one, spi- that shelved him to have struck the right chord, were admirably rituelle et rieuse—such as sometimes ornaments society—whose expressed in the hasty reply, which, like almost every other, ex- thousand nameless graces have draw a and detain a crowded forted a burst of applause—R n'est pus question de cela—c'est circle around her. True, the agreeable badinage, the naïve re- de vous qu'll s'ag,it.' He succeeds however in extracting her secret. mark of innocence or coquetry, the sly innuendo, and sallies of a She describes her first meeting with her lover—his rescuing her humour sometimes playful, sometimes malien, are the flowers of a from the impertinence of some young men, " qui ne craignirent wit that enlivened perchance the days of Louis Quatorze ; but the pas de minsulter"—his voice, so soothing when he sir■lie to her, freezing recollection, that the words proceed from memory, never so severe when he addressed them—the quarrel —" des injures— recurs to damp the enjoyment. The actress issues her borrowed un defi—et tout a coup un grand silence interrompu par ue bruit wealth as from the mint of native wit ; and the intelligence of her sinistre—une esp4-e de cliquetis qui me g,lacazt de jrayeur."—The face seems even to announce the moment of conception. Whether close of the narrative was inimitably given. Instinctively apprised her mood be sprightly or reserved, arch or naïve, tender or austere, of the danger that threatened her defender, she had thrown herself it is still as one speaking from the fulness of her own heart, and before him with outspread arms, when—" J'eprouvai une douleur the exuberance of her own imagination. aieuii qui me fit froid, et puis je 21Csenti8 plus nen." The sur- The French comedy deals in light strokes that seldom act prise—the pain—the swoon, as they lived in memory, were painted violently on the risible faculty, but incessantly recurring maintain to the life, in the expression which the actress threw into these fe‘v within a eaiete de cceur, whose visible sign is an almost 'perpetual simple words. With an innocent and ecstatic delight she proceeds smile. There are those who love this gentler, but more uniformly to expatiate on the qualities of hrr lover—the animation of his sustained elevation of the spirits, better than the uproarious trans- discourse—the vivid colours in which he drew the glories of nature, ports of the broadly ludicrous, which shake the sides and leave —" Oni, je les ai vus ! je voyais quand •il chat la."—But the the heart to sadness. Such may conceive the delight of hearing brilliant countenance and voice of ecstacy subsided. into a con- the conversational felicities, which haply they have themselves scions softness, as she told of the bouquet winch Ernest every vainly tortured their own blunt organs suitably to express, spring- morning presented to her, and which, after wearing all the day, she ing from the lips of the actress as original emanations of humour returned him in the evening,—" c'etait ta notre seal entretient-- or fancy. But to an audience accustomed to characters eccentric for friends had grown jealous of tiler intimacy. At last, when and outre, and to a dialogue of strained conceits and premeditated she came to relate his departure, blank despondency stole over points, the pleasant is tame, and the merely natural insipid. These her face, and in a tone, which despair itself might have borrowed, miss their usual sources of excitement, and complain of the flat- she exclaimed—"Alors je crus mourir ! je sentis avec: desespoir la ness and sameness of the performance, objecting that whatever be nuit eternelle qui couvrait flies yeux ! 11 partint—dne me laissait her part, the actress is still only Mademoiselle Mars. Well, so be rien—pas m6me son image!" And finally, recovering herself to it, and could she be aught better than Mars,— a recollection of the present, she added—" Croyez-moz, mon ami- Whom age cannot wither, nor custom stale le malhear—c'est tabsence." This was the coup-de-grace to your Her infinite variety-- ? equanimity : he that withstood this stroke was—a stout man. But her variety lies al strictly within the bounds of nature, At the same time that years have, in some things, given to Va- and her charms are such as it requires some cultivation of the lerie the shrewdness of the woman, her peculiar loi has, in others, taste to appreciate. The strokes she deals are too random and left her a child. This simplicity discovered itself in a way that fine to tell on a generation inured to deliberately planted hits ;• enraptured the house. Her lady cousin happens to boast herself the print is too delicate for eyes used to a text of unnatural dimen- jeune et jolie — " Joli e—dis mon cousine, quest-ee que c'est sions ; and there are no spectacles in this case to assist a defective que d'ihre johe ?" And then, with a look of child-like and

vision. bewitchine innocence, she offers herself for inspection — " et But however questionable may have been the triumph of ihe ac- moi, suis-je jolie ?" But this stroke was perhaps out-done tress in her laughter-loving characters, not a soul has been proof by another, when on an occasion of momentous interest, with

against her power in the heart-touching and tender. Valerie took an expression of eager intelligence but pure simplicity, she the audience on their vulnerable side ; and there was neither any suddenly turns to Henri, and demands if it was wrong to listen ; resisting, nor any shame in submitting to her. Each one turned —" Dites-moi, Henri, est-ce vial eine ct &outer Y" The return of

to his neighbour to read in his face the rapture that possessed him- her lover, who had absented himself solely for the purpose of stu- self ; and not a few seasoned hearts were surprised by an emotion dying under a celebrated oculist, inthe hope of one day being of which they had ceased to dream themselves susceptible. The able to restore Valerie to sight, substitutes for her former settled plaintive was so blended with the gay, and misery so sublimed by sorrow the liveliest emotions of joy.—" Parle—parle encore !"—she equanimity, that the closest breasts were unlocked, and the obdu- exclaims, when for a moment he interrupts himself to question

rate melted into tenderness. At times, the countenance of the her—"jai besoin de t' ezztendre."—The dreary history of the long,

actress was touched with ineffable sadness ; at times, the sadness long interval she had waved, to hear once more the welcome yielded to a smile yet more affecting, from the contrast it offered to sounds, was all comprised in this brief sentence. When Henri the mournful history so legible in the fixed and vacant eye. " 'Tis returns with the tale of his woes, to claim her ever ready sympathy, strange that death should sing," says some one in King John, when the vain effort to subdue her joy and reduce herself to a mood the dying monarch is heard singing in his delirium ;—it was strange proper for listening, was perhaps the finest stroke in the whole to see a'face bright as sunshine, under a brow where everlastine. performance :—" Quel dommage! je suis si heureuse.—Dites.snoe

dakness had settled. A quiet fortitude and kindly heart,. whicri rite votre chagrin." Something occurs to awaken suspicion of her yearning itself after a cherished long-lost object could yet sympa- lover's sincerity, and the dreadful sensation prompts to the overt

thise with others, were feelingly pourtrayed ; and pity was the more act of listening above alluded to. But what she overhears ha- profuse, that she, who moved it, seemed less disposed to claim nishes suspicion, and she breaks from her concealment, exclaim-

than to bestow it. ins, " tent d'amour—de generosate—alt .1 que j'etais coupable ! " The very first words she uttered, simple as they were, established This brought to mind that exquisite inece of acting in Miss F. H. her influence ; and she seldom spoke after, but some unconcioas Kelly's Juliet, when, after upbraiding Romeo to herself, the tide

expression, full of sad or affectionate meaning, upset the balance of her love, checked but for a moment, broke out into an ungo- of your feelings. She excuses herself to a friend for having made vernable burst of affectionate remorse—" 0, what a wretch was Ito