") for an Adelphi melodrama? Surely
not! These two might have been trusted to turn out the right article.
So the GATTIS leave the Court without a stain on their managerial
character. Therefore, 'tis the brother-authors, "_hoi Adelphoi_,"
who have blundered. Undoubtedly. An Adelphi audience is not to be
satisfied with a one-scene piece, when that scene is without any
incident in it worth a melodramatic father's cuss. A fancy-dress ball
at Covent Garden, however well put on the stage,--and, after all, it
has not beaten the record of the Masked Ball at the Opera House
in Paris, as given in Mr. IRVING'S revival of _The Corsican
Brothers_,--will not carry a piece of far stronger calibre than _The
Black Domino_, and it won't carry this. Neither will a charming "set,"
representing the terrace of the "Star and Garter," at Richmond, carry
a piece to a successful finale, if the audience has lost all interest
in the characters, and does not very much care what becomes of any one
of them, male or female. To the play-goer it is not attractive; he has
seen it all before. "He knows that man and that woman,--they come from
Sheffield;" _i.e._, the persons and the incidents are taken out of a
lot of dramas which dwell in his memory, from BOUCICAULT'S _Formosa_
at Drury Lane, up to OSCAR'S _Lady Windermere's Fan_ at the St.
James's. Of course, my imaginary play-goer is the Bill of the play,
who has "matured," and is not a junior member of the Play-goer's
Club. Then, in the old blind German, there is a touch of TOM TAYLOR'S
_Helping Hands_, and, as for all the rest of the characters, well,
they can be found in the common stock-pot of the melodramatic authors
of the last half-century, for, like SHAKSPEARE himself, these wicked
lawyers and gamblers--the aiders and a-betters--are "not for an age"
(would they were, and that age passed!) "but for all time!"

[Illustration: _B-ch-n-n._ "The prize from the lucky-bag"----

_S-ms._ "A blank?"]

Nothing saves the piece from being absolutely dull, except the
admirable acting, and, I may add, the scenery. It is impossible to
count upon renewing such effects as those in _Formosa, The Flying
Scud,_ and in the _Prodigal Daughter_ at Drury Lane, wherein the wrong
horse was poisoned (in a really dramatic scene), and LEONARD BOYNE,
riding the winner, cleared the brook, thus causing part-author
DRURIOLANUS to clear--any amount of money. There are no two exciting
scenes like these in this Adelphi drama. It