f whose
talents may he reckoned equal to the Germans in the same line. But
in the higher walks of the drama they are worthless. The people have
neither cultivation nor sentiment for serious works, while the poets
to produce them, and the actors to represent them, are alike wanting.

Immediately after the submission of Poland in 1831, the theaters,
permanent and itinerant, were closed. The plan was conceived of not
allowing them to be reoepened until they could be occupied by Russian
performers. But as the Government recovered from its first rage,
this was found to be impracticable. The officers of the garrisons in
Poland, however numerous, could never support Russian theaters, and
besides, where were the performers to come from? In Warsaw, however,
it was determined to force a theater into existence, and a Russian
newspaper was already established there. The power of the Muscovites
has done great things, built vast fortresses and destroyed vaster, but
it could not accomplish a Russian theater at Warsaw. Even the paper
died before it had attained a regular life, although it cost a great
deal of money.

Finally came the permission to reoepen the Polish theater, and indeed
the caprice which was before violent against it, was now exceedingly
favorable, but of course not without collateral purposes. The scanty
theater on the Krasinski place, which was alone in Warsaw, except the
remote circus and the little theater of King Stanislaus Augustus,
was given up, and the sum of four millions of florins ($1,600,000)
devoted to the erection of two large and magnificent theaters. The
superintendence of the work of building and the management of the
performances was, according to the Russian system, intrusted to one
General Rautenstrauch, a man seventy years old, and worn out both
in mind and body. The two theaters were erected under one roof, and
arranged on the grandest and most splendid scale. The edifice is
opposite the City Hall, occupies a whole side of the main public
place, and is above 750 feet in length. The pit in each is supported
by a series of immense, stupid, square pilasters, such as architecture
has seldom witnessed out of Russia. Over these pilasters stands
the first row of boxes supported by beautifully wrought Corinthian
columns, and above these rise three additional rows. The edifice is
about 160 feet high and is the most colossal building in Warsaw. As it
was designed to treat the actors in military fashion and