lighten their load of years and poverty. And sorrowful enough it is to see these old fellows, who, in the fulness of their youth and strength, so often set the benches in a roar, - fellows of infinite jest once, but dumb now as the gibing tongue of Yorick.

But of this sort is not William Warren, as honorable now in the character of Sir Peter as he was in his youth in that of Charles Surface. He is one of the four great comedians of the American stage; not the least of them, either, but introduced here at the end only because he is of a different method from those of whom we have spoken,one of that class to which he, like Joseph Jefferson, is allied by birth, education, and tradition.

Until within a few years, the country was familiar with only the fame of this great artist; for the city of Boston, which absorbs genius as New York absorbs wealth, recognized his powers, and year after year kept him perforce. And measurably he was satisfied to remain, for his audiences were of that cultivated, critical character capable of appreciating his excellence, and liberal enough to reward it. Not only that, but they have a test of worth in that rather crooked city of notions that is not so widely recognized elsewhere in this country of universal equality. They estimate a man there by his moral and intellectual fibre, and, if he bears the test, he is alike honored, whether he be preacher or player. There, a man is not necessarily a social Pariah because he interprets the poets. The cleverest actor of a Philadelphia theatre recently retired from it in the meridian of his days. "Not that I do not love my profession," said he, "but because my family are socially ostracized on account of it." This gentleman, having studied law, is now satisfactorily respectable. In Boston he would not have been obliged to make the sacrifice.

Two years ago Mr. Warren made a starring tour among the principal theatres of the country, and his success was unbounded, and as gratifying to

the artist as it was complimentary to the taste of his audiences.

The crowds who gathered to witness his impersonations then will not soon or willingly forget his manifold excellences, nor fail to remember the rare finish, beauty, and felicity of his acting in such parts as Sir Peter Teazle, Dr. Pangloss, Dr. Ollapod, Paul Pry, Bob Acres, or Sir Harcourt Courtly. It was not alone the general perfection with which his art clothed these characters that made them so satisfying and pleasing, but there was in every tone and gesture, and in every article of his dress and make-up, such a conscientious study of detail, as to win for him the highest praise from the most refined and critical audiences. And these parts, it will be remarked, are, without exception, legitimate comedy, in which intelligence and feeling alone assist the artist to their proper development; in either of them mere farcical buffoonery would be only less than sacrilege. With two exceptions these parts are played by Messrs. Jefferson, Clarke, and Owens; but the last two gentlemen are impotent to grasp their subtile meaning and profound humor, or to turn them to wise results; and, indeed, even Mr. Jefferson, in whose acting the oldschool excellence is so prominent a feature, does not approach Warren nearly enough in these characters to discompose the elder comedian.

In the name of the drama we wish here to record a virtue of this sterling actor: he never mutilates a play. There are some players, and Mr. Clarke is one of them, who, in playing certain characters, cut out all the brilliancies of dialogue from the parts of those who are on the stage with them, and thus shine more refulgently from the obscurity forced upon their fellowartists of the scene. But Mr. Warren, sincere in his respect for the drama, secure in his strength, and "founded as the rock," gives to each actor the full measure of the part, curtails him or her of nothing, and yet shines preeminently above them all by the pure

light of his genius. It is this generous regard for others that secures him the esteem of audience and actors.

Outside of purely legitimate comedy, Mr. Warren has some specialties in which as an artist he stands alone and invincible, and these parts are of ten in the range of lowest comedy or broadest farce. And if they do not afford the same degree of intellectual pleasure that we find in his Sir Peter Teazle and kindred performances, they serve to stretch our laughter to the very "top of our lungs," and their whimsical oddities show us how generous and versatile a thing his genius is. His Sir Peter, with its dignity, repose, gentleness, magnanimity, and plaintive tenderness, is a portraiture satisfying, altogether finished, and complete. But as Jeremiah Beetle, in "Babes in the Wood," Mr. Sudden, in "Breach of Promise," Jonathan Chickweed, in 'Nursery Chickweed," or as Mr. Golightly, in "Lend me Five Shillings," he stands apart from his fellows, and altogether inapproachable. He has all the exuberance and natural drollery of Clarke, all his farcical buoyancy, and to these he adds that traditional oldschool finish, which stops nowhere this side of perfection, and which Mr. Clarke and Mr. Owens have not at all. Mr. Warren's audience cannot reason about the manner in which he plays these parts they can only laugh and be merry over their exquisite funniness. In these characters there is the contagion of laughter in his face, gait, eyes, gesture, and voice.

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But as if his genius were "general as the casing air," Mr. Warren, while he compels our admiration in these parts, forces us to acknowledge the breadth of his powers in a purely eccentric part, that of the poor French tutor in "To Parents and Guardians." And here his French scholarship stands him in good stead. In this impersonation a genius that he seldom develops shines pre-eminent, that rare genius which makes the actor master of our tears. The whole performance is so quiet, so thoughtful, so profound in

its pain and so subdued in its joy at the end, that, through all the old tutor's sorry blunders and eccentricities, we cannot laugh at the stupid figure; or if we do, tears underlie our mirth, and while the smile trembles on the lip, the eye grows dim with pity. So ample is Mr. Warren's power, and with such tenderness does he cast over Tourbillon's ludicrous side the mantle of the old exile's griefs and sorrows, that we can see in him, not the scoff and gibe of the school, but the sorely stricken parent, recovering at last his long-lost child. There is something beautiful in this performance, (lifting it up almost to the height of Mr. Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle,) and Mr. Warren has imparted to it a dignity and grace which only a profound genius could bestow.

In like manner he has taken from "Masks and Faces" a third-rate part, that of Triplett, and made it of almost the first importance in the play. No one who has seen it can forget the exquisite display of humor and pathos in this impersonation. And it is in such characters, where deep feeling alternates with whimsical oddity, that his rare facial expression has full scope. His voice is adapted with exact fidelity to the look, and to such perfection is this carried, that a blind man might almost know his expression from the emphasis of his words.

Whether in the grace and high-bred courtesy of Sir Peter, the cowardly bluster of Bob Acres, the pathos of Tourbillon, or the drollery of Peter Dunducketty, this great artist of the old school has no superior in the new one. Mr. Jefferson, in the assurance of a genius pure, steady, and true, may contest the day with him upon his own ground, and excel him off of it, but Mr. Jefferson's method is more than half composed of the same characteristics which altogether distinguish Mr. Warren's.

The talents of these actors are alike in great measure inherited, for their fathers in the early days of the American theatre contended, shoulder to shoul

der, for the applause of the town, night after night, for long years. William Warren, comedian and manager, died in a hale, prosperous old age, almost in sight of the theatre, while old Joe Jefferson, his long-time comrade, true to his love for nature in the evening of his days as in their morning, turning his back upon the tinsel of the stage and the gloom of the city, took up his staff, and wandered away to where the fields were green and the birds sang; and so wandering, he came at last to a little village among the mountains of Pennsylvania, where rippled the blue waters of the Susquehanna; and there he rested for a while, died, and was laid away in a favorite corner of a little churchyard; and ten years after John Bannister Gibson, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, came to the grave of his old friend, laid thereon a decent slab, and wrote for the

grand old comedian an epitaph, full of beauty and feeling.

We cannot take leave of these great artists, who, no less through their "so potent art" than through the daily beauty of their lives, lend honor to the drama, without expressing the profound sense of our obligation for the pleasure they have time and again afforded us; and in this we do but echo the voices of the many thousands whom they have delighted.

The comedians are of the true knighterrantry, — they correct all errors, reward all virtue, punish all wrong, between the rise and fall of the green curtain. They are good geniuses who scatter our cares, delay the coming wrinkles that threaten our brows, and out of the plenitude of their exuberant life so gild ours with laughter that we make friends with fortune and sit down with content.

Thrilling Adventures of DANIEL ELLIS, the great Union Guide of East Tennessee, for a Period of nearly Four Years, during the great Southern Rebellion. Written by Himself. With Illustrations. New York: Harper and Brothers.

Mosby and his Men: a Record of the Adventures of that renowned Partisan Ranger, John S. Mosby, etc. By MARSHALL CRAWFORD of Company B. New York: G. W. Carleton & Co.

The Shenandoah; or, The Last Confederate Cruiser. By CORNELIUS E. HUNT (one of her officers). New York: G. W. Carleton & Co.

THE field is vast, yet we think it would be hard to find among modern publications three other books so foolish as these. They are all written in that King Cambyses vein which is agreeable to the sunny Southern mind, and which, for a few pages, amuses the Northern reader, and forever thereafter pitilessly bores him. The interest is perhaps longest sustained by Mr.

Crawford, whose aberrations of mind, of morals, and of grammar are in the end less tedious than the fourth-rate sentimentality and sprightliness of Mr. Hunt, or the unsparingly eloquent patriotism of Mr. Ellis. Mr. Crawford tells us that for seven years before the opening of the war he was a clerk in the Treasury Department at Washington. When the Rebellion began, he resigned before the oath of allegiance could be offered him, and he exults somewhat that, though other Southern-minded clerks took the oath, "their truculency [sic] did not save them." He went South, and got a place in the Confederate Treasury, where, if the pay was insecure, there could not have been a great deal of work; and later he joined Mosby's command. He is not a man capable of writing the history he attempts, and his book is not an intelligible narration of events. It is nothing, indeed, but a confused reminiscence of the forays of Mosby and his men, now upon helpless Union farmers, now upon small detached bodies of Federal troops, now upon

pigs and chickens. All events are alike important to Mr. Crawford, and he exults as much in a raid upon a farm-yard as in the capture of armed men. Whether the Mosby rangers fight or fly, they are, to his mind, equally valorous; and if ever they meet with a gallant foe, it is but to display a more heroic courage. The book is illustrated with the portraits of some of the eminent men celebrated, which form a rogues' gallery of such frightfulness that the reader instinctively buttons his pocket and looks to the fastenings of his window-shutters. These pictures have the characteristics of faithful likenesses.

Mr. Hunt is a writer of more intelligence than Mr. Crawford, but of nearly the same moral obliquity. Some small remorse he does feel now and then at the spectacle of burning whale-ships and merchantmen; but then remorse is a luxury in which the predatory frequently indulge themselves without the least interruption of their accustomed pursuits; and Mr. Hunt appears to throw in his expressions of regret as much for the sake of the poor literary effects he admires as from any real feeling. He has no doubt that the career of the Shenandoah, whose crew never brought her within view of an armed foe, and only used her as a means to steal chronometers and set defenceless vessels on fire, was a noble career; and he is quite unconscious what a pitiless comment on the whole shameful farce it is, that the commander of the Shenandoah should at last run away with her officers' money.

We regret these histories of Mosby and of the Shenandoah, because we think them calculated to do great mischief. They will go into the hands of a generation at the South which ought to be taught, if not repentance for the late Rebellion, at least a sense of what was truly heroic in the Southern people during the war,—their courage in the face of danger, their stubborn endurance, their devotion. There can be no hope for the South until it is ashamed of the cruelty, the rapacity, and the bravado which such books applaud.

We suspect that Mr. Ellis, the Union Guide of East Tennessee, did not himself write the story of his thrilling adventures, though it is told in his name. There is much in its general literary character which might lead us to attribute it to the historian of "Mosby and his Men," if the political tenor of the book did not so loudly forbid the supposition. If Mr. Ellis really wrote

it, and if his conversation in the private circles of refugee life at all resembled its style, we can only wonder that any fugitives under his charge ever came into our lines alive.

President Reed of Pennsylvania. A Reply to Mr. George Bancroft and others. February, A. D. 1867. Philadelphia: Howard Challen; John Campbell.

IT is well known to the students of American history that during the political contests which arose from the adoption by Pennsylvania of a new constitution the character of President Reed was bitterly assailed. Foremost among the assailants was his former friend, General Cadwallader, who in an elaborate pamphlet accused him of an intention to desert the cause of his country in the critical December of 1776. In 1842 a new attack was made upon the memory of President Reed for the purpose of injuring his grandson, William B. Reed. This attack was made in the form of letters communicated under the signature of Valley Forge to "The Evening Journal" of Philadelphia, and bearing the names of General Smith of Baltimore, General Wayne, and Sergeant Andrew Kemp. Those letters, although proved to be forgeries, were republished in 1848 and 1856. The last edition contains a reprint of the Cadwallader pamphlet. Mr. John C. Hamilton, in his "History of the Republic of the United States," revives the accusations of the pamphlet, and Mr. Bancroft, in his recent volume, adds new accusations based upon a passage in the manuscript Diary of Count Donop. It is to meet these accusations that the pamphlet before us was written.

In this defence of his grandfather, Mr. William B. Reed enters into an elaborate examination of the Cadwallader pamphlet, relying in part upon the opinions of Washington and Greene, but chiefly upon evidence drawn from letters written by Cadwallader in 1776-77, which, contradicting the statements of his pamphlet, show that his memory had misled him upon some important points to such a degree as to raise grave doubts of the propriety of accepting it upon any; and also upon an affidavit of John Bayard, in which he expressly denies the opinions and statements attributed to him in the pamphlets. The answer scems to us complete.