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MARY CLIFFORD.

If, dear readers, you have a taste for refined morality and delicate sentiment, for chaste acting and spirited dialogue, for scenery painted on the spot, but like nothing in nature except canvas and colour—­go to the Victoria and see “Mary Clifford.”  It may, perhaps, startle you to learn that the incidents are faithfully copied from the “Newgate Calendar,” and that the subject is Mother Brownrigg of apprentice-killing notoriety; but be not alarmed, there is nothing horrible or revolting in the drama—­it is merely laughable.

“Mary Clifford, or the foundling apprentice girl,” is very appropriately introduced to the auditor, first outside the gates of that “noble charity-school,” taking leave of some of her accidental companions.  Here sympathy is first awakened.  Mary is just going out to “place,” and instead of saying “good bye,” which we have been led to believe is the usual form of farewell amongst charity-girls, she sings a song with such heart-rending expression, that everybody cries except the musicians and the audience.  To assist in this lachrymose operation, the girls on the stage are supplied with clean white aprons—­time out mind a charity-girl’s pocket-handkerchief.  In the next scene we are introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Brownrigg’s domestic arrangements, and are made acquainted with their private characters—­a fine stroke of policy on the part of the author; for one naturally pities a poor girl who can sing so nicely, and can get the corners of so many white aprons wetted on leaving her last place, when one sees into whose hands she is going to fall.  The fact is, the whole family are people of taste—­peculiar, to be sure, and not refined.  Mrs. B. has a taste for starving apprentices—­her son, Mr. Jolin B., for seducing them—­and Mr. B. longs only for a quiet life, a pot of porter, and a pipe.  Into the bosom of this amiable family Mary Clifford enters; and we tremble for her virtue and her meals! not, alas, in vain, for Mr. John is not slow in commencing his gallantries, which are exceedingly offensive to Mary, seeing that she has already formed a liaison with a school-fellow, one William Clipson, who happily resides at the very next door with a baker.  During the struggles that ensue she calls upon her “heart’s master,” the journeyman baker.  But there is another and more terrible invocation.  In classic plays they invoke “the gods”—­in Catholic I ones, “the saints”—­the stage Arab appeals to “Allah”—­the light comedian swears “by the lord Harry”—­but Mary Clifford adds a new and impressive invocative to the list.  When young Brownrigg attempts to kiss, or his mother to flog her, she casts her eyes upward, kneels, and placing her hands together in an attitude of prayer, solemnly calls upon—­“the governors of the Foundling Hospital!!” Nothing can exceed the terrific effect this seems to produce upon her persecutors!  They release her instantly—­they slink back abashed and trembling—­they hide their diminished heads, and leave their victim a clear stage for a soliloquy or a song.