The Sun.
London, England, 1864-10-17 00:00:00

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with charcoal, either in sight of an audience or out of it,
nor do English policemen release criminals arrested on
warrants from motives of high-flown generosity. 'I he
dialogue though pointed is not better than the ordinary
i:ialogue of plays which do not succeed, and very much
inferior to the dialogue of cif her the "Colleen Dawn" c,r
the " Ticket of Leave," and the acting is of tie poorest and
most conventional kind. Everybody looks his or her pert
decently, but except the gentleman who represents the
fraudulent banker, whose shrewd villany and courage are
the only genuinely dramatic feature in the play, and Mr
Vining who acts the fraudulent clerk, nobody realizes eve
the common-place ideas which the piece contains, The
comedian will not understand the distinction between
comedy and buffoonery, and acting for 5 minutes—when he
brings news of the fire—almost as well as Toole reduces
the rest of his part to an absurd pantomime. Paul
the victim of the fraud is a stick who does not even
stand silent effectively, while Miss Barnett's ex-
pression of the hard hearted, purse proud, over-petted
London girl is very much what a ladys-maid's would
be if she tried to assume the character. Even Mr. Vining,
who undoubtedly can act, succeeds only in the first half of
his part, giving the shrewd scoundrelly clerk very fairly,
and the clerk returned from California perfectly, but acting
the clerk ruined but comic with too single an eye to the
notion of fun entertained in the gallery. Still with all
these drawbacks the piece succeeds, for it has in it, as we
said, a rough inartistic realism more especially of locale.
One scene is laid at Charing Cross on a winter's night, and
the spectators having just seen it outside welcome it inside
with boisterous applause. It is capitally painted to begin
with, and the hot-pie man and the man who walks about
with an illuminated advertisement on his head, the police-
man and the boy who tumbles, the chestnut furnace, and
the woman who begs are all introduced, and all with one
exception are as real as if just hired out of the streets, as is
very likely the case. The exception is the woman who has
to do something beyond looking the part, and who accord-
ingly begs with a scream for which if she did it outside she
would be taken up by the police. The whole is, however,
well arranged, and the delight of the audience with a scene
which gives them nothing to think about, which they can
criticise minutely without fear of error, and which appeals
to the memory and not the imagination, is most amusingly
exuberant. London from Hampstead is not quite so well
done, at least it has never been our lot to see Hamp-
stead under that Florentine atmosphere, but there is
a crowning tableau. A house in some lane off Co-
vent Garden is set on fire, burns and explodes before
the audience, while the regular crowd of loafers,
street girls, street Arabs, policemen, firemen, and horses
make up a scene of noise, confusion, and excitement which
keeps the breath of the house suspended. It is really a most
creditable piece of carpentery and arrangement, and we only
hope for the sake of the lessee and the owner that Mr.
Lloyds, who designed it, knows the use of tungstate of soda.
for if the canvass once caught the flame of those spirit
lamps, precaution would not be of much avail. The final
scene seems poor and ineffective after the grand "effect,"
but the audience depart delighted, having seen and heard
nothing except an indifferent repetition of what they see
every day. The taste for realism, which is the taste of the
hour and in its way a sound one, has been gratified, and
author and lessee will probably realise thousands by a piece
which, if the scene were laid in Paris, would not rue a
week. Will nobody take advantage of the new fancy to
give the theatre-going public a genuine play, a drama of
the life of to-day, with all this scenic realism and some-
thing else besides, a dialogue worth hearing for itself and
a plot reasonably interesting and consistent ? Is all the
plot-making ability in England consumed in making
novels, or does the want arise from the absence of a link
between the playwright and the manager ? The latter
may have, and we think has, something to do with it. It is
the natural temptation of managers to apply for aid only.to
known "hands,' men who have succeeded, and the difficulty
of getting a play acted at all unless written by a known
London professional checks or suppresses invention. Why
should not managers act like publishers, announce that
plays sent them would really be read, and pay by success,
so much for every acting night? There must be dramatic
ability sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the taste of the
hour left somewhere or other in the land, and a successful
piece nowadays must pay well. The poverty of the theatres
has become a tradition, and though the change has not yet
attracted many educated men to the stage, it has given
managers energy and hopefulness enough to try experi-
ments. In a country which once had the richest native re-
pertory in the world, it cannot be necessary for lessees to
rely exclusively on adaptations made from the French, and
in their English dress either so unnatural that they fail
from the first, or, like the catastrophe in the "Streets of
London," so un-English that the pit at the moment of
horror does not see what is going on, or, like " Gabrielle de
Beiloisle" so " improper" that the adapter is compelled to
sacrifice the point, and make the plot absurd lest English
morality should take just offence. People are wanting to
see to-day on the stage, and not last century. Who acts
Lord Foppington ? but Lord Dundreary brings a fortune.
A drama as good say as the "School for Scandal," but
filled with the people of 1861, and surrounded by the ac-
cessories which modern skill in carpentry can produce,
seems to be the thing required, and it surely cannot be
wholly beyond the range of English inventiveness.

THE " LONDON REVIEW' ON THE NAUTICAL CIRCUM-
LOCUTION OFFICE.—Mr Dickens is frequently taken to
task for raising what is called a shallow and ignorant pre-
judice against the administration of business in Govern-
ment offices. We are told that the British Circumlocution
Office is as unreal and fictitious a creation as the Milord of
French comedies, or the Island of Barataria. in ,` Don
Quixote." But several times a year the Board of Admi-
ralty comes forward upon the stage to perform a new and
original pas de fascination and to vindicate the truthful-
ness of Mr Dickens. There is, after all, such a place as
the British Circumlocution Office. There is a happy ad-
ministrative valley, as secluded from the world as the
valley of Rasselas itself, where the imnates play at leap-
frog all day at the national expense, where ships are built
that cannot swim, and ships that .can swim are imme-
diately dismantled. A famous Greek author tells us of
the Egyptians that they seem to do everything by the rule
of contrary. The Egyptian women dig, he observes, in
the fields while the Egyptian men stay at home and
spin. The modern Egyptians will be found without
much difficulty at Whitehall, absorbed in the pro-
fitable and interesting task of throwing the Eng-
lish navy into a state of inefficiency. complicating
dockyard accounts, underpayimg valueble seamen, pro-
moting the world advancement of incapables, and muddling
themselves alternately over targets and guns. There is a
Providence, says Gibbon, that watches over imbecility; nor
can it be denied that the Board of Admiralty has the best
claims to its protection. Wooden ships are passing into
disrepute. But the wooden walls of Old England will sur-
vive so long as the Admiralty stand. The naval affairs of
the greatest maritime nation in the world are administered
by a department which seems impervious to all reform, and
whose present spokesman in the House of Commons, Lord
Clarence Paget, is only remarkable in that assembly for his
uniform and invariable inaccuracy in every single official
statement that is extorted from him. The paying off of the
Royal Sovereign at this precise moment is the Admiralty's
last and perhaps its most singular feat this year, The clues-

Lion of turret going ships being just now the one question

which it is of paramount importance to solve, with charac-
teristic ingenuity the Admiralty, as soon as Parliament is
up, and they got their hands loose, proceed at once to shelve
it. It is something like the dismissal of the Iron Plate

Committee early in the summer. For the last two years
the Iron Plate Committee had been labouring with con-
summate success at experiments between plates and guns.
Just as the contest was arriving at its solution, the Ad-
miralty broke up a committee, which had succeeded till
then—a rare achievement—in giving satisfaction to both
impartial critics and private inventors alike. The cause
was known in official circles to be that the Iron Plate Com-
mittee entertained a very different opinion to Lord Clarence
Paget and his colleagues with respect to the originality of a
certain Admiralty target. Within a few days after Sir John
Hay had expressed this opinion in the house, the Iron
Plate Committee were quietly informed that the necessity
for their labours was at an end, If, in the few experiments
that they were permitted to make before closing their report,
they virtually solved the great problem of heavy guns, no
thanks at all is due to the Admiralty, though a great deal
of thanks is due to their own industry and zeal. We
know now, in spite of the blunders of the Admi-
ralty, that England can make heavy rifled guns,
which, with steel shell, will shatter every float-
ing target in existence. In the last three
months this fact has been made patent to the
country. Whatever may be the future improvements in
artillery, great guns up to GOO-pounders now exist, and can
be turned out to any number, which would destroy a fleet
of ironclads as easily as the lighter service guns would de-
stroy a fleet of wooden vessels. This fact ascertained, the
all essential question is how best to build ships to carry and
manceuvre them, and the Royal Sovereign is a most impor-
tant experiment on this very subject. She is not a floating
battery, as the anonymous but official apologist of the Ad-
miralty in the Times suggests. To insinuate that a turret
ship can be nothing more than a floating battery is to beg
the very question that is in debate, and the very
question
which the Royal Sovereign was meant to elucidate if the
Admiralty would only resign themselves to givin her fair
play, Instead of letting the Royal Sovereign furnish data on
the subject, the Admiralty take the opportunity of the recess
to pay her off, and put her in the steam reserve. She
is to
be attached, forsooth, to the Excellent as a tender, to carry
out experiments with turrets and guns. What possible good
she can render in this capacity remains an inscrutable mystery
to ordinary minds. That her turrets and her guns will work
in harbour or on a mill-pond may be easily conceded. What
the :ship, to say uothing of her apparatus, can perform