GRACE DARLING might certainly recover damages for a libel upon
her that has been acted this week at the Adelphi, in the shape of a melodrama, as monstrous as ever was brought out, called The Wreck at Sea. or the Fern Light, in which she figures by name, ttttt i i. personated by Mrs. YATES. It would be to t had for notice, but for the ingenuity displayed in robbing the heroic deed of GRACE DARLING Of It' virtue, which is curious ; moreover, she is made to commit a homicide ! A sailor on board the Forlarshire, when the steamer is out the point of going down, attempts to rob a widow, but is discovered and thrown overboard : he swims to shore, and Grace Darling surprises him soliloquizing to a miniature that he has stolen, anti hears hem brother's and her lover's names mentioned. He throws the miniature away, and she picks it up ; but being perceived, a struggle etisues for it, which ends in her pitching the villain into the sea. To save her lover and her brother, who she learns are on board the steamer, she goes out with her father, and in a" life-boat" too ; and, as if that were not enough to diminish the danger of the attempt and her disinterested selfalevotion, another boat, manned by Mr. COLLINS, in a pair of spotless white truisers and a bran new beaver bat, puts off also ; and they take the passengers out of the vessel, not off the rock. To complete the hodgepodge of falsifications, old Darling is represented as a sentimental widower ; and the Fern Islands are furnished with a pretty numerous populatiom-including some fishermen who won't go to the aid of the crew without being paid, a General Postman in full livery, and a powdered footman in pumps and silk stockings. Even the " scenic effects" are inferior: the only good points are the beating-in of the windows of the lighthouse by the waves, which sprinkle the stage with " real water," and the going down of the steamer, bows foremost; the thunder and wind, too, are capital. Mrs. YATES is as good a representative of Grace Darling as could be wished ; but to bring that maiden on the stage at all is a gross impropriety, and a profanation of a noble action. Mrs. KEELEY was put in a part quite unworthy of her talents, and having not the slightest connexion with the main incident; and WILKINSON, BEVERLEY, and Witmer, assist her in making fun out of very sorry materials.
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