uite clear about it until the situation
where that slyboots _Rebecca_ artfully threatens to chuck herself
off from the topmost turret rather than throw herself away on the bad
Templar _Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert-sans-Sullivan_. The Opera might
be fairly described as "Scenes from _Ivanhoe_," musically illustrated.
There is, however, a continuity in the music which is lacking in the
plot.

[Illustration: All Dicky with Ivanhoe; or, The Long and Short of it.]

The scenic effects are throughout admirable, and the method, adopted
at the end of each _tableau_, of leaving the audience still more in
the dark than they were before as to what is going on on the stage, is
an excellent notion, well calculated to intensify the mystery in which
the entire plot is enveloped.

The change of scene--of course highly recommended by the leech
in attendance on the suffering _Ivanhoe_--from the little
second-floor-back in the top storey of the castle tower, where the
stout _Knight of Ivanhoe_ is in durance, is managed with the least
possible inconvenience to the invalid, who, whether suffering from
gout or pains in his side,--and, judging by his action, he seemed
to feel it, whatever it was, all over him,--found himself _and_ his
second-hand lodging-house sofa (quite good enough for a prisoner)
suddenly deposited at the comparatively safe distance of some three
hundred yards or so from the burning Castle of Torquilstone, in which
identical building he himself, not a minute before, had been immured.
So marvellous a flight of fancy is only to be found in an Arabian, not
a Christian, Night's Entertainment.

The Tournament Scene is a very effective "set," but practically an
elaborate "sell," as all the fighting on horseback is done "without."
Presently, after a fierce clashing of property-swords, sounding
suspiciously like fire-irons, _Ivanhoe_ and _Sir Brian_ come in,
afoot, to fight out "round the sixth, and last." There is refreshing
novelty in Mr. COPLAND's impersonation of _Isaac of York_, who might
be taken for _Shylock's_ younger brother who has been experimenting
on his beard with some curious kind of hair-dye. This comic little
_Isaac_ will no doubt grow older during the run of the piece, but
on the first night he neither looked nor behaved like _Rebecca's_
aged and venerable sire, nor did Miss MACINTYRE--who, by the
way, is charming as _Rebecca_, and who is so nimble in skipping
about the stage when avoiding the melodramatic _Sir