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THE SCOUTS OF THE PLAINS.
For rolllicking, pure, unadulterated enjoyment, for the stirring up of old memories, for the glimpses into the far off, when we took our six penny worth of gallery at the Sarrey, the "Vic," the Pavilion and Marybone, and on winter evenings sat breathless over Cooper's leather stocking novels, we have never equaled last night, at Hill's Opera House. The good old farce of "Thrice Married," was the curtain lifter, and we thought, what must the play of the evening be if the company can afford to commence with one of the uproaringist trifles in the stock dramatic repertoire. We have seen Vestris at seventy sing "The Dashing White Sergeant," and dance like twenty; we know that her ultimate husband- Charles Mathews, still plays "juvenile business" with the same spirit he did forty years ago, and last night we saw the fascinating Morlacchi as agile, as graceful, as full of empressment as she was in the palmy and Palmer days of the "Black Crook." Her dancing is the poetry of motion, and her naturally broken English gives added piquancy to her pretty face and part.

But what shall we say of the "Scouts?" By what critical canon shall we analyze its construction? By none; like the plains on which it plays, the characters it portrays, it has no likeness to anything else, it is unique, sui generis, and "naught but itself can be its parallel." The wonderful melodramas of old times are eclipsed by it- where they had one death, this has twenty; where they used their popping iron in the cause of crime, this fires a whole volley in the interests of virtue. Take Tam burlaine the Tartar, Tom Thumb the Great, Rignum Funnidos, Chrononontonthologus, Bombaster Furioso, Titus Adronicus, Maworm in the Hypocrite, and Nat. Lee's mad tragedy in sixteen acts and some odd scenes, and still this