Ot Quarto.
The little compact season of French comedy and vaudeville, of which M. Lafont has been the meritorious chief, terminates tcrnight, and will be immediately succeeded by a series of French comic bperas.
Nothing could be more creditable than the style in which the St. James's Theatre has been conducted. M. Regnier, Madame Allan M. Brindeau' Mademoiselle Fix, all of the Theatre Francais, have Leen presented to the public in parts for which they have been re- nowned in their own metropolis. M. Ferville, a veteran of the Gymnase, and Mademoiselle Luther, a more recent luminary of the same establishment, both admirable artists, have augment- ed the general strength; for it has been the peculiarity of the present short season that the best artists, instead of passing along in succession like the figures of a phantasmagoria, have remained to- gether, so as to produce a series of combinations that Paris itself could not excel Not a single piece has been inefficiently represented; and if it were only for the refined manner in which Madame Emile de Girardin's excellent little comedy of La .Tole fait Peur has been introduced to a London audience, M. Lafont's short management ought to live long in the memory of the better class of playgoers. We specify this piece, because it has been essentially the piece of the season, and rendered the theatre an object of general attraction, when previous performances had received less patronage than was their due. line Partie de Piquet, with M. Ferville in the principal character-8u1- liven, with M. Brindeau as the hero—and the elegant little fashionable bucolic Au Printemps, in which lovers old and young strayed about a green-wood of the eighteenth century, and talked so prettily in dainty verse —have all been novelties well worth seeing, and may be aptly ranged in the tablets of memory under that especial coruscation La Joie fait Peur. A kindly thought too should be bestowed on Madame Thi- bault, the duegne ; M. Leon, the useful amoureux; M. Touxillon, the standard old gentleman, who by this time must have become as demiy attached to the St. James's Theatre as Long Tom Coffin to the Ariel ; and Mademoiselle St. Georges, who, lifted above her usual level, has not proved Icarian in her flight. Though the last-named artists are not stars of the first magnitude, they are all intelligent and well versed in their business, no as to be widely different from that tragic troop with which Made- moiselle Rachel loves to favour her admirers.
Putting all things together, we are certain every habitué, on taking leave of M. Lafont, will hope to see him again as a theatrical director, and hope also that the patronage bestowed on him by the general public will equal that awarded by the Royal Family.
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