The Press.
London, England, 1855-01-27 00:00:00

Re pram.

OLYMPIC.—A cheerful, lively little piece, called
Tit for Tat, was brought out on Monday even-
ing at this theatre with decided success. It is
an adaptation from the French, slight in plot,
rather threadbare in material, but animated in
dialogue and in a variety of amusing situations,
making up for the want of any peculiarly striking
incident. The story is simple—that of "jealous
husbands "—and the moral is so amusingly worked
out that, although the subject is by no means a novel
one for the stage, the interest never for a moment
flags from the first to the closing scene. A Mr.
Thornby, who is a happy bachelor with very pecu-
liar notions about matrimony and the duties of
husbands, takes a malicious pleasure in paying

THE PRESS.

marked attentions to the wife of a Mr. Sowerby, the
suspicious and jealous husband. Mr. Thornby,
however, has a double motive in this, for he not only
amuses himself by torturing poor Mr. Sowerby, but
he hides his real design, which is to make successful
love to the pretty niece of his old fiiend Mr. Frankland
(Sowerby's partner), who lives in the same house.
A series of absurd tricks are contrived between Mr.
Thornby and the ladies to tease Mr. Sowerby, until
at length be is worked up to such a pitch of
jealous suspicion that he hides himself behind
curtains and tables, in cupboards, and everwhere,
to assure himself of his wife's inconstancy.
He orders Thornby out of the house, confines his
wife to her own room, and commits all sorts of ex-
travagancies short of murder. However, Thornby,
who it appears, is living in chambers which belong
to Mr. Sowerby, calls " purely as a lodger." and
only upon " matters of business," and drives poor
Sowerby to the verge of distraction by constantly call-
ing at the house to make endless domestic complaints.
At length Mr. Sowerby's miseries are terminated by his
discovering what a fool he has been, and that Thorn by
has simply been making love to Mr. Frankland's
niece, who returns the affection, and the first act
concludes with their marriage. Now that the unscru-
pulous bachelor, with those peculiarly red-republican
notions of the duties of husbands so destructive to
all connubial felicity, has at length become a "Bene-
dict" and "one of us," Sowerby's joy is unbounded
as the shadow of the idea of being able to pay off
Mr. Thornby in his own coin flits through his mind.
The second act opens, many months have elapsed,
and Mr. and Mrs. Thornby are now seen in their own
house, with the Franklands and Sowerbys as their
guests. Thornby's romance has soon sunk into the
commonplace ; he no longer plucks pretty bouquets
of a morning for his wife, neglects his personal ap-
pearance, wears easy boots and a dressing-gown, and,
in fact, is rapidly sinking into a state of alarming indif-
ference. Sowerby is delighted ;he sees the moment
has come, and, like a good general, does not neglect
the opportunity. Infinite bouquets are suddenly sent
to Mrs. Thornby from some unknown hand, but with
no effect. A well-known plausible lady's-man is next
invited down through Sowerby's means, but by mis-
take a gentleman of the turf arrives in his place.
Mrs. Thornby, who is partly in the secret, and rather
piqued at her husband's indifference, sees that
she can flirt with Mr. Easy Bolton without any
danger, and she goes so far as to consent to an
assignation with him in the garden. Meanwhile
Thornby has been watching this growing preference
of his wife for the society of Mr. Easy Bolton, and,
as might be imagined, Sowerby loses no opportunity
to represent to his friend the danger which he ran*,
and at length so works upon his real love for
his wife, and upon his hidden suspicions, that he is
led gradually from one step to the other, till
Thornby himself, once the torment of married men,
hides behind curtains and in cupboards, and goes
through all the frantic manifestations of a jealous
husband, to Sowerby's intense delight. In the end,
of course, everything is explained, and Thornby
being sufficiently punished, the moral is inferred.
The acting throughout was capital. Mr. Robson,
as Sowerby, was admirable in his ridiculous exhibi-
tion of the pangs of jealousy, and so perfectly
natural throughout. There is no effort or stage con-
ventionality in his acting. He is the preposterously
particular little man fully impressed with the strictest
notions upon the subject of the married state and a
wife's duty to her husband. Mr. Wigan, on the
other hand, is the lively and amusing " young man "
who torments all his married friends, gets married
himself, and finds out that, after all, his "liberal
ideas " of married life cannot stand a practical trial
when applied personally. His acting, natural and
easy, is clever to a degree, and his attitudes remark-
ably good, especially when Sowerby and he have a
" little private conversation," and also when he
comes in " purely as a lodger " and sits upon the
corner chair, placing his hat upon the ground. It
was a capital characteristic bit. Mr. Emery, too,
must not be forgotten; his make-up was remarkably
clever. The " turf " man was also very well repre-
sented by Mr. Clifton; and the ladies, whose respective
parts are rather insignificant, were yet sustained by
Miss Bromley, Miss Maskell, and Miss Turner, with
grace and spirit. The piece was highly successful,
as it well deserved to be, supported as it is by such
capital acting, and the curtain fell amid loud and
continued applause. It has been repeated with the
greatest success during the week, and will, we have
little doubt, obtain a good run dating the winter
season.

HAYMARKF.T.—Miss Cushman has been engaged,
'and is to appear on Monday next as Romeo, with a
provincial celebrity as Juliet. There is a rumour
also that the Spanish dancers will return once more
to this theatre.

M. VAN CUTSEM, of Neuraringen, in Belgium, has
discovered a process by which the dust of coal may
be converted into a fuel which burns longer than
ordinary coal.

SATURDAY,

jortign gtrt, Xittraturt, ar.

THE FRENCH MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE, COM.
MERCE, AND PUBLIC WORKS paid a visit a few days
since to the College of France, to examine the appa.
ratus for hatching fish, established by M. Coste. He
found 250,000 recently-hatched fish, 150,000 of which
had only just been brought up from the establishment
at Hunninguen. All this large number was con-
veyed to Paris at the same time, and with a scarcely
perceptible loss. It consists of common trout, trout
from the lakes, salmon from the Rhine, and trout
from the Swiss lakes.
THE WHOLE ACADEMY OF VIENNA are employed in
illustrating a prayer-book as a present to the Em-
press of Austria. The Deutsche Kunstblatt speaks
of it as creditable to the art of the present century.
The Giornale di Roma announces the presentation
to the Pope of the magnificent tiara offered by Queen
Isabella of Spain. The presentation was made by
the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, the Archbishop
of Compostella, the Bishop of Salamanca, the Chargé
d'Affaires of Spain, Count de Cedillo, and M. Pizzala,
the Queen's jeweller, by whom the tiara was con-
structed. The framework of the tiara is in silver ;
the three crowns are in brilliants, pearls, emeralds,
and rubies ; and on the summit is a cross of diamonds
placed on a globe of sapphires. The total number
of precious stones employed is nineteen thousand,
and they are all fixed in such a way that light plays
upon them in all directions. The tiara, which for
nearly the last half century has been used on grand
occasions by the Popes, was a present from Napo-
leon I.

THE FRENCH POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT have
issued four kinds of postage stamps. One kind is
of the value of ten centimes, or a penny ; another
of the value of twenty centimes, or twopence;
a third forty centimes, or fourpence ; and a fourth of
eighty centimes, or eightpence. The 10c. stamp is
coloured yellow, the 20c. blue, the 40c. red, and the
80c. purple. They are all of a square form, about
the size of an English penny postage stamp, and they
all have a square border, on which is stated the
amount of postage they pay. In the centre is a pro-
file of Napoleon 111., set in a round space, the filling
in of which is deeply coloured. The paper of which
the French stamp is made is thinner than that of the
English, and it sticks better to the letter. The French
Government has avoided embossed stamps, the diffi-
culty of making them stick to letters being very
great. The four colours selected for the French
stamps are admirably distinguishable.

taltsiastiral.