that Mr. Barabbas, having retired from the public scaffold to private life, has seceded in favour of Jack Ketch, who is saved from the rope himself, on condition of his using it upon the person of Sir Gregory and every succeeding criminal.  All the characters come on with the cart, and a denouement evidently impends.  The distracted lover demands of somebody to restore his mistress, which Gipsy George is really so polite as to do; for although the bills expressly inform us she has committed “suicide,” and we have actually seen her jump into the river Lea; yet there she is safe and sound!—­carefully preserved in an envelope formed partly by the Gipsy himself, and partly by his cloak.  She, of course, embraces her lover, and leaves Jack Ketch to embrace his profession with what appetite he may; all, in fact, ends happily, and Sir Gregory goes off to be hanged.

This, then, is the state to which the founders of the Newgate school of dramatic literature, and the march of intellect, have brought us.  Nothing short of actual hanging—­the most revolting and repulsive of all possible subjects to enter, much less to dwell in any mind not actually savage—­must now be provided to meet the refined taste of play-goers.  In the present instance, nothing but the actual spiciness of the subject saved the piece from the last sentence of even Sadler’s Wells’ critical law; for in construction and detail, it is the veriest mass of incoherent rubbish that was ever shot upon the plains of common sense.  The sketch we have made is in no one instance exaggerated.  Our readers may therefore easily judge whether we speak truly or not.

* * * * *

PUNCH AT THE NEW STRAND.

When Napoleon first appeared before the grand army after his return from Elba—­when Queen Victoria made her debut at the assemblage of her first parliament—­when Kean performed “Othello” at Drury Lane immediately after he had caused a certain friend of his to play the same part in the Court of King’s Bench—­the public mind was terribly agitated, and the public’s legs instinctively carried them, on each occasion, to behold those great performers.  When—­to give these circumstances their highest application,—­“Punch,” on Thursday last, came out in the regular drama, the excitement was no less intense.  Boxes were besieged; the pit was choked up, and the gallery creaked with its celestial encumbrance.

As the curtain drew up, there would have been a death-like silence but for the unparalleled sales that were taking place in apples, oranges, and ginger-beer.  Expectation was on tip-toe, as were the persons occupying that department of the theatre called “standing-room.”  The looked-for moment came; the “drop” ascended, and the spectators beheld Mr. Dionysius Swivel, a pint of ale, and Punch’s theatre!