fords room for the display of the
most characteristic qualities of Talma and Mademoiselle Georges; and
when we saw them act OEdipus and Jocasta in this piece, we agreed that
there were certainly no actor and actress, of equally transcendent
merit, who act together in either of the London theatres. The distress
of the play is of too horrible and repulsive a kind, we should conceive,
to be ever admitted on the English stage; but it furnishes occasion for
the display of consummate art in the imitation of the most terrible and
overpowering emotions; and it is difficult to conceive a more powerful
representation than they exhibited of the gloomy forebodings of
suspicion, of the agonizing suspence of unsatisfied doubt, and the
"sickening pang of hope deferred"--heightened, rather than diminished,
by the consciousness of innocent intention, and the feeling of
undeserved affliction, and giving way only to the certainty of
irretrievable misery, and the phrenzy of utter despair.

In concluding these remarks, upon a subject which interested us so much,
we are anxious to offer some general reflections upon the character of
the French stage, which were suggested by the observations we had an
opportunity of making. It is far from being our intention, to enter into
any discussion of the rules upon which the construction of their
tragedies is supposed to depend, or to occupy the time of our readers,
by useless remarks upon the sacrifices which it is said must be made, by
strictly observing the _unities_ in dramatic compositions. Quite enough
is known of the _defects_ of the French tragedy, and it is much to be
regretted, that those who have had an opportunity of attending the
French theatre, have generally carried their national prejudices along
with them, and seem to have been more desirous to confirm the
prepossessions they had previously acquired, than to form any fair and
correct estimate of the merits of that drama. We are a little aware in
general in this country, how much the composition of our own tragedies
might be improved, and how much the effect of the talents which the
stage displays might be increased, were we as candid in admitting the
very great excellencies which the French stage possesses, as we have
been desirous to discover its imperfections. Without presuming to
attempt an examination of the French theatre, in the view of correcting
what appear to us the errors in the public taste, we mean merely to
state in what r