The Sun.
London, England, 1849-12-06 00:00:00

TIIE SON,

ASTLEY'S AMPHITHEATRE.

On Tuesday evening we visited this theatre, the
performances bin for the benefit of Mr. Batty, the
spirited proprietor, and se were appy to see that the
bill of-fare he hai provided for his f.iCtrds attracted a
host around him. The theatre was crowded in every
par*, and the star, as in days gone by, had on this
occasion to be brought into riqui,ition to accommo-
date those echo occupied the ring during the perform-
ance of the Battje of Waterloo. The %thole of the
equestrian entertainments went off the greatest
posr.ible eclat. The clever and agile feats of Mr:
Wheal, the clown, and the burlesque dancing of Mr.
Jackson, with the well known mock electioneering
speech of Mr. T. Barry, the old-established favourite,
excited the risible faculties of the audience; but the
gems of the evening were Hernandez, the youthful
American equestrian, and Mr. Pablo Fanque and, as
the bills term her, his " matchless" mare, Bella. The truly
astonishing performance of this beautiful mare are of
the most wonderful description; the various different
steps which she executes with her clever rider can
only have been attained by the most arduou3 and
persevering energy. Of Hernandez- we can only
say he was as graceful and active as ever, and fully
sustained in his daring feats his reputation. as the first
rider in the world; he was called into the circle thrze
times after his performance, and greeted with a
shower of bouquets and a per:"ect tumult of applause.

THEATRE ROYAL DUI.LIN.
MR. AND MRS. KEAN.

(From the Dublin Evening Packet of Dec. 4 )
In consequence of Professor Risley, with whom
Mr. Calcraft had effected an engagement for the
equestrian wonder, Hernandez, having disappointed
our lessee, Mr. and Mrs. Kean, with their wonted
kindness, made a voluntary proffer of their services
for two nights more. They consequently appeared
last night in the Gamester and the Honeymoon, and
will perform this evening—positively for the last time
—in Strathmore and King Rene's Daughter.
We cannot permit Mr, and Mrs. Kean to leave our
metropolis without once more recording our admira-
tion of their genius, and of the gratification- its dis-
play has afforded us. To those who look upon the
drsma not as a gorgeous medley of unmeaning sights
and idle sounds, but as a vivid delineation of human
nature as it is, when stripped of the rna,k and lacquer
of conventionality, or al a clear illustration of moral
truths, the performance of Mr. and Mrs. Kean must
have given unmixed pleasure. These accomplished
artists have one excellence in common—that of form-
ing a clear idea of the character which they personate,
and that of acting in perfect keeping with it. The
images of the poet's conceptions which they express
are definite, and coherent. But we think that
their perception of character and style of acting arc
remarkably dissimilar.
Mr. Kean is the more imaginative, he idealises the
personage he has to represent into a form of majesty
and grandeur which, perhaps, the vulgar cannot ap-
preciate, but which is beautifully consistent in its
amplification. He expresses the heroic rather than
the human. His Hamlet and his Strathmore are

beings of noble thought and statelier mould than
ordinarily belong to " children of clay." There is
an unmistakable appearance of greatness in all that
they do and say. Mr. Kean, too, is rather intellec-
tual the passionate. We know that this is not the
common opinion. But in all his tragic bursts, whe-
ther struggling between duty and affection when he
sentences Sir Rupert Lorn to death, or breaking forth
into sorrow over Aphelia's grave, lie appears to us
ever anxious tc show the superiority of mind over in-
firmity. IVe think indeel his characteristic is a
simple but poetic dignity, which invests his creations
with the ornate hues of mugnilicence rather than
with the common lineaments of humanity. And still
he does not fail in delineating the mo:e subtile features
of Shakspeare's Hamlet—the wondrous play of irony
and misanthropy, of paxsion and self-control, of craft
aid indignation, of inanity and deep thought, which
distinguish this matchless creation. His Hamlet, in
truth, is a fine representation of a mind overwrought
with horror, and struggling, even to its own disor-
,, banisetion, with cox.flicting emotion. Mr. Kean, in
short, seems to us even to prefer the calm and stately
ideal to the changeful lineaments of ordinary huma-
nity. We would like extremely to see him in one of

the characters of the old Greek drama—in the adieus
or the Oresets, for example.
Alre. Kean is quite the reverse of her gifted
husband—a delicate and most just appreciation of
nature as it is, and correct impersonation of its
phenomena, are her characteristics. She moves and
speaks exactly as the character she sustains should
move and speak. Her delineation of passion, and
especially of the passion of love, is remarkably
perfect. She is full of the music of humanity. We
feel that her representation of her part is stamped
with truth. Tier Katherine Lorn, her Julie', and
her Ophelia, we confess to be beings whom we hive
met before, and who would act on the theatre of life
as they act on the mimic stage. Mrs. Kean is less a
tragedy queen than a graceful and tender woman,
whose genius has' bestowed itself upon art.
It is, in tru!h, impossible to eulogise too highly the
tenderness, pathos, delicacy, and beauty, marking
all Mrs. Kean's
,exquisitely-ferninine portraitures,
whether embodying the high.souled Katherine Lorn
or the gentle lolanthe.
We are convinced when we state that these gifted
performers have it in contemplation to retire from
that stage of which they are the brightest ornaments,
we make an announcement that will excite regret
through the length and breadth of the land.
Macready, too, is about to doff the sock and buskin,
and, nathless, that confirmed mannerism which has
marred nearly all his T 3 presentations, his loss to the
drama must be severely felt. When, then, Charles
and Mrs. Kean and Macready have left the stage,
where, we ask, are successors worthy of them to be
found ? There is no education now for young actors
—no school for thetn to practice in—no crowning
reward, such as sn engagement at "01d Drury" or
Covent-garden, the anticipation of which lightened
the early drudgery of the Kegns, the Youngs, the
Cookes, and the Kembles. Free. trade in theatres

has ruined those provincial schools in which the young
actors copied those motels critics pronounced the
most perfect. Every haberdasher's apprentice with
a soul " above buttons," thinks that he can " fret
and strut his hour" as ably as those who have
spent a life maturing the genius born with them.

It will indeed ba a dies c-arbonc vatandus for the
drama when Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean retire from
the scene of their triumphs.

They are
.young—fortune is at their feet—Fame's
wreath has crowned them, and we know we only
echo the univE,rsal voice when we declare they
must not leave us yet.

K ENSAL-G BEEN CEMETERY.
(From Eliza Cook's Journal.)

In these days of desecrated churchyeris it requires
a visit to Mensal-green, or some other of the suburban.
cemeteries, to sweeten our imagination with regard to
the resting.places of the dead ; how contrasted is their
solemn quiet, their placid tombs, the fresh green turf,
the shrubby alleys, the perfume, and the flowers, with
the crowded, reeking, never•resting graves of city
burial-places. .At this season of the year there is
something in the aspect of sepulchral places, that
harmonizes well wi(h the shade of depression
which the falling leaves, the grey sky, and heavy
atmotphere of waning autumn insensibly inspire. On
a bright summer's morning, when the very sense
of motion is delicious, and nature teams with
images of life ; when the warm buoyant air affects our
spirits as if the atmosphere were laughing gas, and we
remain as recklessly defiant of death's•heads and cross
bones (if any such offensive trophies are to be met
with in these flowery regions), as if we had no per-
sonal interest in the only hatchruent which, indepen.
dent of the herald's office, each son of Adam is
entitled to set up. In winter, too, one feels no voca-
tion for churchyard visiting% ; there is nothing cona•
fortable in the hivernal appearance of these narrow
houses, with all their imagery wrapped in snow; the
stone and green turf seem as melancholy then as in
Ophelia's song, aid we would none of them ; 'tis only
misery, with brain on fire, can realise relief in " cold
obstruction." But at this period, when the sign of
change stamps itself upon the fading face of
nature, when the chestnut and lime trees
grow pllose, and the leaves of the sycamore
are spotted brown; when the hand of the econo-
mical mother turns to account their falling ges-
tures, and wraps the seared leaves round the forest
roots; when vegetation, vague and objectless, dissi-
sickly, and out
pates itself in degenerate blossoms,
of season ; and a rank over-growth, like children's,
for the grave ; there is something to remind us that
we are included in those metamorphoses, and that,
whatever path we tread, it is, after all, a branch
road to the tomb. The re-action of lassitude upon
over-vitality, tells as plainly upon our system as on
the general signature of surrounding obi acts, and we
feel a complacency towards the flowery bowers
wherein mortality takes its deep rest, that seldom
occurs to us (except under peculiar circumstances) at
other seasons of the year.
It was with a mind imbued with some such sentiments
that we found ourselves sauntering along one of the
ti 1e path: in Kensal-green Cemetery a few weeks back;
musing, as the light thistle eleven (which the winds
of autumn bad detached from its flowers' dise) floated
by us, why man alone should feel such fear and mistrust
for the future, which charges itself with the sefety of
an insignificant seed, and while consigning it to the
seemingly accidental guidance of the wandering
breeze, provides for iti subsequent existence! It was
one of those calm, grey, pensive looking clays m which
the subdued feeliegs we have spoken of are certain
to predominate. The twirling leaves fell like great
tears upon the graves they sheltered, and every image
round us whispered the refrain of Felicia Ilemans'
song, " Passing Away." The mignonette, the roses,
the heliotrope, and' clematis, with many others of their
lovely sisterhood, bloomed in all their summer bright-
ness, and covered up the loathsomeness of deal), under