Mr. Sheridan, he observed, "that was very ungrateful, for I am sure I laughed heartily at his tragedy of The Battle of Hastings.'' FINE FEELING. GARRICK, in his performance of the venerable Lear, acted so powerfully on the feelings of one of the sentinels, (who were placed on each side of the front of the stage,) that the poor fellow fainted away during the last scene. After the play, flattered by this unsophisticated token of applause, Garrick sent for the soldier into the green room, and gave him a guinea. The man whose turn it was, the next night, to do the duty, hearing of the good fortune of his comrade, while Garrick was performing Ranger, made a sham faint, to the no small amusement both of audience and perfor mers. EXTRAORDINARY RECOGNITION. THE following event, though strange, is, nevertheless, true, and happened in the Glasgow Theatre, in the year 1793. Mrs. Cross, who played, in the previous winter, at Covent Garden Theatre, went, in the summer, to Scotland, to play with Mrs. Esten. When the season concluded at Edinburgh, the company went to Glasgow. On one occasion, the Provost paid the Theatre a visit, and, as soon as Mrs. Cross came on the stage, he exclaimed, loudly," Stop the play, 'till I speak with that woman." The anxiety he manifested occasioned the manager instantly to suspend the performance. The curtain was dropped, and the Provost went round to Mrs. Cross's dressing room. After a very few inquiries, he found her to be his wife! from whom he had been separated nearly twenty years. They each had supposed the other dead.-The husband immediately took her home; and, the next evening, by way of showing that she had not forgotten the profession by which she had formerly existed, she made her appearance in the Theatre as a spectator. SEATS ON THE STAGE. It was customary, in the earlier ages of the Drama in England, to admit that class of spectators, who frequented the boxes, on the stage, and to accommodate them with stools, for the use of which they paid sixpence or a shilling, according to circumstances. It would seem, however, that this absurd custom was confined to the smaller houses, or Private Theatres, as they were termed; where the company was less numerous, and more select. Here, the fastidious critic; the wit, ambitious of distinction; and the gallant, studious of the display of his apparel or of his person; were to be seen, seated upon stools, or reclining upon the rushes with which the stage was strewed, and regaling themselves with pipes and tobacco, supplied, either by their own pages, or by the boys of the house. Amidst such "most admired confusion" and indecency were the dramatic works of Shakspeare, and his contemporaries, produced; works, which we, "With all appliances and means to boot," with every thing that can promote the reality of the scene, and invigorate the exertion, have never seen equalled, and very seldom, indeed, approached. The following quotation, from the induction to "Cynthia's Revels," is quite in point. "And here I enter." 1 Child. What! upon the stage too? 2 Child. Yes; and I step forth like one of the children and ask you, Would you have a stool, sir? 3 Child. A stool, boy! 2 Child. Aye, sir, if you'll give me sixpence, I'll find you one. 3 Child. For what, I pray thee? what shall I do with it 2 Child. O lord, sir! will you betray your ignorance so much? Why, throne yourself in state on the stage, as other gentlemen use, sir! Seated then at their ease, they laughed, talked, and cracked jokes with each other during the performance, and had, as Decker says, "a signed patent, to engross the whole commodity of censure; may lawfully presume to be a guider, and stand at the helm, to steer the passage of the scenes." The style and manner of the criticisms which they vented between the whiff of their pipes, are admirably ridiculed by Jonson, in the induction quoted above. Now, sir, suppose I am one of your genteel auditors that am come in, having paid my money at the door, with much ado ; and here I take my place, and sit down. I have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket, my light by me, and thus I begin : [at the breaks, he takes his tobacco.] By this light! I wonder that any man is so mad to come to see these rascally tits play, here-they do act like so many wrens, or pismires ;-not the fifth part of a good face amongst them all. And then, their music is abominable ;-able to stretch a man's ears worse than ten-pillories; and then, their ditties-most lamentable things, like the pitiful fellows that make them.-Poets! By this vapour, an 'twere not for tobacco, I think-the very stench of 'em would poison me. I should not dare to come in at their gates-A man were better visit fifteen jails-or a dozen or two of hospitals-than once adventure to come near them." The disgust which so ridiculous and absurd a custom could not fail to excite in the audience, at length, however, banished it from the Theatres ; although an attempt was made, in comparatively modern times, to revive it, in favour of the Duchess of Queensberry, at the performance of the Village Opera," at Drury Lane, in 1729. The ill success of this experiment was very elegantly alluded to by a wit of the day, in the following lines. " Bent on dire work, and kindly rude, the Town, TRUTH WILL OUT. THE late John Palmer, whose father was a billsticker, and whose son occasionally practised in the same humble though hereditary occupation, strutting about, one evening, in the Green Room, in a pair of glittering buckles, a gentleman pre |