Martinuzzi and The Cloak and Bonnet continue to be played
at the English Opera-house ; where the time for the commencement of the performances is altered from eight o'clock to the usual hour of seven. The tragedy has been pruned of many redundancies, but to weed out the rank luxuriance entirely would be to pluck up nearly all the flowers of rhetoric : the performance is more brief, but not less tedious; and the audiences whom cariosity or " orders " draw to the theatre, though anxious to applaud, have but few opportunities of breaking the listless silence of resignation. To call such performances "perfectly success- ful," is simply saying the thing that is not : this dry style of puffing is far less excusable than the florid conventional phrases of " overflowing houses "—" thrilling interest "—" unbounded applause " ; the variance with fact is so direct and naked, with no exaggeration to put the inno- cent on their guard. The " Council" have shown that they could readily furnish a flaming specimen of the puff grandiloquent.
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