The Sun. — 1863-07-29 (London, England)

SUN.] A WHITECHAPEL TRAGEDY—recently witnessed  in the larger of the two theatres "down east"—is thus described by a writer in the AS'peetator of last Saturday The piece, he says, was entitled the " Fatal Shadow ; or. the Man with the Iron Heart." The character may be gathered from its title. The principal character is certainly a villain of the deepest dye. Strange to say, he is not an aristocrat, but an attorney. Of course, the surprising disclosures and comings to life again are so frequent as to render all description of the plot utterly impracticable. This lawyer—whose "make up" is certainly the ne plus ultra of villany —cuts the throat of a baronet who had years betore supplanted him in love, and obtains the conviction for the crime of an innocent but mysterious being, who appears to be either a great nobleman or a harlequin, I could not quite tell which. To make sure, he pours poison down his throat in prison, and swears he saw him commit suicide. He ruins both son and nephew of his first victim by forgery and fraud, and drives his mother by like means to suicide by suffocation with charcoal—a magic lantern view ' of the scene delighting the audience beyond measure. Whenever he is thwarted he comes to the front of the stage and exclaims, with diabolical grimaces and corresponding gestures, "How soon it would be done—with a twist—of my wrist; and ends by drawing a razor across his throat with a guttural "c-click." He loves, but is hated by, a mysterious being, " the woman with the golden hair," to whom he offers twice, under peculiar circumstances. The first time, on her refusal, he chains her down by a barrel of powder, her favoured lover close by her side, and then places a slow match in the powder. The next limo forms the "sensation" of the piece. He throws her over a bridge in Venice, and then flints her a rope, which, in her death agony, she seises. He then exclaims three times, "Wilt thou be mine ?" At the third time of asking the goldenhaired one spurns him in a series of articulate screeches, which bring the house down. He then abandons the rope, and she sinks , but her lover and the mysterious harlequin appear, and the former saves her by a sensation header a la Myles Coppaleen. A CONFESSION !—Thaekeray, in the new number of the Cornhill ?or August, says :—" But that my age is mature and my habits formed, I should really just passing like to try a little criminality. Fancy a forged bill to your banker ; calling on a friend and sweeping his sideboard of plate, his hall of umbrellas and coats : d then going home to dress for dinner, say—and to meet a bishop, a judge, and a police magistrate or so, and talk more morally than any man at table I How I should chuckle (as my host's spoons clinked softly in my pocket) whilst I was uttering some noble speech about virtue, duty, charity I" VEMPEREUR !—The only question which men put to themselves in Paris, in France, and even out of France, is, 4, What is he doing or thinking in Vichy ?" There, the face of every one who approaches the gloomy Druid is anxiously scanned, and an influential foreign paper even went the length of proclaiming that there was hope for peace, because a gentleman who is at the same time a friend of Poland and a friend of Napoleon looked downcast after an interview with which he was favoured in the Delphian Chalet. Of Shakespeare's complete works, translated by Francois Victor Hugo, the eleventh volume has appeared already. The Invalide publishes a letter from Warsaw, dated the 12th instant, stating that the police had arrested three men, on one of whom was found an order from the National Government to assassinate the officer by whom, as it happened, the arrest was made. " Such incidents," the letter says, " are not uncommon at Warsaw." It also states that the collection of taxes, by the Russian authorities, is being successfully enforced. Even the arrears of former , years are being paid up.