A SCENE (ACT III.) FROM "THE THUNDERBOLT," AS ACTED AT THE NEW THEATRE.

headed and spiteful copyist of the London fashionable lady. Helen Thornhill, the illegitimate daughter of the deceased Mortimore, is a bright, sweet, resolute, independent young woman, devoted to art and capable of earning her living, and, in a painful emergency, she evinces the breadth of an innately noble mind. The precision with which each identity is sustained, in naturally contrived and inevitably sequent situations, throughout colloquies that tell the story without superfluous words, is extraordinary and in the highest degree admirable. There are four acts. In the first the putative heirs are convened and the entangled circumstances are made known. In the second the felony is confessed. In the third the truth is revealed to all concerned. In the fourth an adjustment of affairs is arranged, accordant to Helen Thornhill's impulse of generosity and feminine heedlessness of law or justice.

The opening scene is reminiscent of the opening scene of Bulwer's comedy of "Money," and in contriving that an innocent person shall shield a guilty one, by assuming the guilt, the dramatist has employed an old expedient. His use of old devices being new and his method brilliant, that does not matter. The scene in which Phillis confesses her crime and that in which Thaddeus is questioned by the lawyers are singularly vital pieces of dramatic construction and writing, and during the performance of them the audience is held in a tremor of suspense. In almost every particular the acting

was worthy of the play. Mr. Louis Calvert's embodiment of James Mortimore,-solid with force of character, massive with resolution, firmly poised upon will, narrow in mentality, hard in temperament, and clearly indicative of that person's long experience of a grinding, bitter, harsh ordeal of life,-ranks with the best examples that the contemporary Stage has provided of common human nature. The physical investiture of it was perfect. Mr. A. E. Anson, in the more complex and exacting part of Thaddeus Mortimore, gave a rare example of sympathetic and impressive impersonation, making the character distinct, sustaining it without deviation, and amply responding to the heavy demand which it makes upon deep feeling and fervent expression. The sweet, cheerful spirit of Thaddeus, before he knows that his wife has stolen the will, and his protective tenderness toward that wretched, suffering woman, after her confession, were shown in a manner that was lovely in its sincerity and simplicity. The pervasive tone of the performance was purely chivalrous. The false story of the theft and destruction of the will, told in the vain effort to protect his wife, was uttered with a subdued earnestness and a breaking voice that were truly pathetic, and the aggregate of the performance,-demeanor, speech, listening quietude, and expressive movement, was clearly indicative of quick perception of character, fine mentality, knowledge of human nature, and either an informing experience of

sorrow or an intuitive grasp of the meaning of it. The manner of the exit when the afflicted husband exclaims "I never have regretted my marriage,”—meaning to testify his unshaken, abiding faith in the woman whose wrong-doing he knows but rightly attributes to weakness and not to wickedness,-was so fine that it illumined the actor as well as the character. Louis Gottschalk made the peppery little Colonel Ponting comically absurd and offensively real in his utter selfishness,-as he ought to be. The sterling value of personality in the actor and of repose in the actor's art was graphically shown by Mr. E. M. Holland and Mr. Ben Johnson in their respective performances of the two lawyers, Elkin and Vallance, slight parts, but made of exactly the right importance by equable sustainment of dignity, good breeding, and judicial demeanor. Mr. Johnson's manner and tone of voice, in uttering the words "Good morning," as Vallance makes his final exit, were at once exceedingly amusing and subtly expositive of the faculty of suggestive expression, half-revealing, as they did, a whole volume of meaning-the contemptuous disgust of a lawyer who is a gentleman for clients whom he despises and for the sordid attributes of human nature of which he has seen so much and grown so weary. Miss Olive Wyndham, as Helen Thornhill, pleased by her refinement of manner, the ease of her level speaking, and the earnest feeling that she evinced in the few moments of excitement which are provided for the part.