The Sun.
London, England, 1842-09-30 00:00:00

ADELPHI THEATRE.

It was with a feeling of melancholy that we entered
the Adelphi Theatre last evening. Recollections of
bye-gone times, " when all was merry as a marriage
bell," and of those who made those times pass so
merrily, came thronging back upon us. We thought
of Terry, of Mathews, of John Reeve, of Yates.
Poor Fred. Yates—twelve months ago we saw him
upon that very stage, delighting and delighted—and
now, with him the last act of the tragi-comedy
of life is over, he has made his final exit—the
curtain has fallen. Alas ! poor Yates ! We could
have better spared a better man. Mr. Gladstone, the
present manager, has very judiciously retained all the
old favourites of the Adelphi company, and has added
to its strength by securing the very efficient services
of Miss Faucit and Miss Murray. The piece chosen
for the opening was a new melo• dramatic romance in
three acts, from the pen of Mr. Fitzball, entitled the Owl
Sisters, or the Haunted Abbey Ruins. The Owl Sisters
being certain Nuns who, having, with their Abbess,
been more addicted during their lifetime to pampering
than to mortifying their appetites, were by St Mark,
on St. Mark's night, transformed into owls, the Ab-
bess herself being condemned to live on as an old
decrepid miserable beldame. Once a year, however,
on the anniversary of their transformation, the ruined
abbey is restored to its pristine state of splendour—
the owls become for one hour beautiful Nuns—the
Abbess resumes her youth—their paramours are re-
vivified, and for one hour they renew their unholy
orgies. This scene of the revival of the nuns is the
grand scene of the piece, and was excellently well
executed, as far as the getting up was concerned.
" But," exclaims the reader, if he be an old play-
goer, " surely I have seen something very like that
before ?" To be sure you have, Sir, in Robert the
Devil; but that is nothing to the authors of the Fitz-
ball school, who not content with " adapting," as
they modestly call it, every good situation in every
other play, generally contrive to make it ridiculous
in the adaptation ; and such is the case in the present
instance. In the original, there is something sublime
in the idea of the sheeted spectres of the Nuns arising
from their graves, but Mr.Fitzball has j ust stepped across
to the ridiculous, and by the. introduction of divers
strange-looking figures, with goggle eyes and flap-
ping wings, which do duty for owls, has rendered his
incantation scene richly farcical. This annual exhi-
bition has, it appears, taken place every St. Mark's
night for a hundred and fifty years, but as the Ab-
bess, who, during the other three hundred and sixty-
four days and twenty-three hours of the year passes
off as Bess of the Woods, tak s care frequently to in-
form us, during the course of the piece,

" When the last of the race of Evelyn Hall,
The last of the Glenburns his bride doth call,
Then the doomed Abbess shall burst her thrall;"

which consummation, after a due course of melo-
dramatic adventures takes place at the end of the
third act, and it was hard to say who was the most
delighted—the lovers that they were unite I—the Ab-
bess that she was dying, or the audience that the piece
was over. This piece in its construction and its dia-
logue is below even the usual average of articles of the
Fitzball manufacture. Nothing but the powerful
acting of Miss Faucit, as the Abbess, and of Lyon, as
Michael, an old .mendicant, who knows her secret,
could have possibly saved the piece, and as it was, its
announcement for repetition was not received without
loud marks of disapprobation. The comic parts of the
piece devolved upon H. Beverley, Wilkinson.. and
Mrs. IL P. Grattan. To Mrs. Grattan the highest
praise is due for the manner in which . she per-
formed the part of Maud, an innkeeper's daughter.
She exerted herself to the utmost'— put the
audience into thorough good-humour whenever she
appeared, and kept them so as long as she was on the
stage—s2ng three songs most exquisitely, and gave
one, the " Frightful, spiteful old bachelor''' with such
admirable humour, and such excellent taste, that it
was honoured most deservedly with a double encore.
The scenery was splendid, and the getting up of the
piece admirable. Everything that could be done for
this melodrama, either by the manager or the actors,
has been done, and the author has nothing to com-
plain of on that score. After " God save the Queen"
had been sung by the whole company, the farce of
The Rifle Brigade was performed, in which Wright,
0. Smith, H. 3 y and his lady, and Miss Mur-
ray kept the l, I nce continually on the titter, and
Norma followed, with " Glorious Paul" as the heroine.
The house was crowded.

RAILWAY Tr. AFFIL.--A Shareholder in many Rail-
ways accounts for the diminution in Railway receipts
during the months of June, July, August, and Sep-
tember this year, as compared with the corresponding
months of last year, by the fact of a general election
and a double session of Parliament. One Railway car-
ried 37,000 passengers, paid for by contending parties
—all honest, corrupt, or corruptible.
THE QUEEN'S VISIT.--A paragraph has been going
the round of the papers (originating, we believe, with
a northern contemporary), estimating the expenses of
her Majesty's reception by the Marquis of Breadalbane
at 60,0001., or some such sum. We have the best
authority for giving this absurd statement the most
unqualified contradiction. The writer of the paragraph
acquainted with the subject as
s rent-roll and other family
tnin withheessGlasgowtth. appearseatrhndt
saoNpoll
Another
poebeefl ereuucw:
uniforms
thifaifoich
qmiy
at tdiaihseie
ne n
statemento has statedwhich
ble i
‘ wahrii
lbitotalgehhea lndai
nnmrdc
aeodsgruert
resumed
acnert
d(a-
of 200 men were equipped on the occasion of the
Royal visit. We have express authority to say that
this statement is utterly unfounded, and that every
man of the Highland guard was presented with his
entire equipment, joined with a recommendation that
he should preserve it as a memorial of the late splendid
occasion, and be in readiness to turn out again should
another such opportunity occur.—Scotsman.
The late Walter Blackney, Esq., died in embar-
rassed circumstances, originating, we believe, in his
untoward connection with the politics and representa-
tion of this county, his fortune being small, and his
family very numerous. He was returned to Parlia-
ment in 1832 (on the retirement, or rather flight, to
Portugal of Sir John Milley Doyle), after a severe
contest, and he continued in Parliament, with Mr.
Wallace, until 1835, when both retired to make room
for the late N. A. Vigors, Esq., and Mr. A. Raphael.
Mr. Blackney has left a widow and a large family to
deplore his loss. We believe considerable property
devolves to the Marquis of Ormonde by the death of
this gentleman, who was the last life in some im-
portant leases. In the county of Carlow his death
will create a change also, as his property there was
held during his own life, which now passes away
after a lapse of nearly a century, to Lord Kenmare,
H. G. Morgan, Esq., county Wexford, and the Messrs.
Newton, of the county of Carlow. The Radical re-
gistry will suffer by his death.—Carlow Sentinel.
ERRONEOUS OPINIONS TOUCHING THE SUDDEN
DEATHS OF CHILDREN.--At an inquest held yester-
day by Mr. Wakley, M.P., on the body of a child
that had died suddenly, he made the following obser-
vations to the jury :—lt was extremely erroneous to
suppose that children who were found dead had been
overlaid, or otherwise suffocated by their mothers.
Nature had so well provided for the preservation of
the most helpless of her offspring, that a child over-
laid or placed in bed in a suffocating position would,
for self-preservation sake struggle, and scream so
violently as in most .cases to wake not only the
mother or nurse, but the other inmates of the house.
The generality of eases like the present were instances
of sudden death, and not of any sort of suffocation.
hue of, the skin showed that it had
The pale
not been suffocated ; but that was not by any
means an infallible test, for lately he had
held an inquest on two • lads of the same age,
who died froara, the same cause—viz., imbibing
foul air whilst asleep on the top of a lime-kiln. The
skin of one of them was'as- white as the paper before
him, a proof of natural death ; the skin of the other
was of a deep vermillion colour, and the features were
bloated, proofs of death from suffocation. He would
also observe, that in the cases of the sudden deaths of
illegitimate children, whose mothers received no sums
for maintenance from the fathers (and it was so in the
present instance), jurors were too prone to entertain
suspicions that the mothers had acted unnaturally.
Such suspicions ought not to be entertained, unless
cruelty and ill-treatment were proved, for it every
day happened that children, those of the rich and most
affluent, were found dead in their cradles, whilst asleep
on mattresses, where they could not possibly be over-
laid or suffocated, and in the midst of play the infant
heirs to large possessions had the hand of death sup-
denly placed upon them. It was wrong to suppose,
that because poor frail woman often became the vic-
tim of seduction, the sin she thereby committed stifled
in her bosom the natural love of offspring all the fe-
male creation happily possess. It did not do so, and
it was very doubtful whether illegitimate or legitimate
children were the most beloved of their mothers.
PLEASURE EXCURSION ON THE GREAT WESTERN
RAILWAY. Yesterday
morning a special train, which
'
was a curiosity from its length and freight of pas-
sengers, arrived from Bristol at the Paddington
station of the Great Western Railway, propelled by
two powerful engines, and containing between 700
atle
sights of the great naetropolis. The
pass
Michaelmas-d ay among :
and 800 of the inhabitants of Bristol and ifs vicinity,
who had availed themselves of the opportunity fu-
nished by the Directors of the railway, of making a
trip at one half the usual luresdfdrtii:ind s,London,and gee.
Set:.
Paddington terminus at
train left Bristol
at 7 A. M., and arrived atthe their
ia
a quarter to twelve, half an hour beyond the usual
time, the delay being caused by the high wind which
prevailed, and the loss of time occasioned by the train
stopping to take up an additional number of passen-
Fers, at the Bath, ch:ppenliam, and Swindon stations.
_the parties, who were incumbered with little in
the shape of luggage, beyond a few goodly geese for I.
presentation among their friends, will leave town, on
their return to Bristol again, by a special train at five
this evening.