MEN AND ACRES, the new comedy at WALLACK’S, is one of the best of TAYLOR’S pieces, and a decided improvement upon the carpenter work of BOUCICAULT.  It has been rechristened by Mr. WALLACK, and its former name—­Old Men and New Acres, or New Aches and Old Manors, or something else of that sort—­has been conveniently shortened.  If it does not convince us that the author has improved since he first began to write plays, it certainly reminds us that there is such a thing as Progress.  In the latter play, Mr. J.W.  WALLACK was a civil engineer.  In the present drama, he is an uncivil tradesman.  Both appeal to the levelling tendencies of the age; and in each, the author has done his “level best”—­as Mr. GRANT WHITE would say—­to flatter the Family Circle at the expense of the Boxes.

The cast includes a Vague Baronet and his Managing Wife, their Slangy Daughter, their Unpleasant Neighbor and his wife and daughter, an Unintelligible Dutchman, an Innocuous Youth, a Disagreeable Lawyer, and the Merchant Prince.  This is the sort of way in which they conduct themselves,

Act 1. Disagreeable Lawyer to Vague Baronet: “You are ruined, and your estate is mortgaged to a Merchant Prince.  What do you intend to do?”

Vague Baronet. “I will ask my wife what I think about it.”

Enter Managing Wife. “Ruined, are we?  Allow me to remark, Fiddlesticks!  Get the Merchant to take our third-story hall-bedroom for a week, and I’ll soon clear off the mortgage.”

Enter Slangy Daughter. “O ma! there was such a precious guy at the ball last night, and I had no end of a lark with him.  Good gracious! here comes the duffer himself.”

Enter Merchant Prince. (Aside.) “So here’s the Vague Baronet and his wife.  And there’s the slangy girl I fell in love with.  Nice lot they are!” (To Managing Wife.) “Madam, there is nothing, so grand as the majesty of trade.  Your rank and blood are all gammon.  We Merchant Princes are the only people fit to live.  However, I’ll condescend to speak to you.”

Managing Wife. (Aside.) “How noble!  What a gentlemanly person he really is!” (To Merchant Prince.) “Sir, I bid you welcome.  Here is my daughter, who was just praising your beauty and accomplishments.  I leave you to entertain her.” (Exeunt Baronet, Wife, and Lawyer.)

Merchant Prince (placing his chair next to Slangy Daughter’s, and leaning his elbow on her.) “There is nothing like trade.  We tradesmen alone are great.  We despise the whole lot of clean and idle aristocrats.  I keep a Gin Palace in Liverpool.  Does your bloated aristocracy do half as much for suffering humanity?”

Slangy Daughter. “Speak on, speak ever thus, O Noble Being!  It’s awfully jolly!”

Curtain falls, and Baker wakes up to lead his orchestra through the mazes of “Shoo Fly."

Appreciative Lady. “Isn’t it nice?  Miss HENRIQUES’S dress is perfectly beautiful, and it sounds so cunning to hear her talk slang.”