“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.

We really must stop here, to point out to dramatic authors the importance of this novel form of conjuration.  When the history of Fauntleroy comes to be dramatised, the lover will, of course, be a banker’s clerk:  in the depths of distress and despair into which he will have to be plunged, a prayer-like appeal to “the Governor and Company of the Bank of England,” will, most assuredly, draw tears from the most insensible audience.  The old exclamations of “Gracious powers!”—­“Great heavens!”—­“By heaven, I swear!” &c. &c., may now be abandoned; and, after “Mary Clifford,” Bob Acres’ tasteful system of swearing may not only be safely introduced into the tragic drama, but considerably augmented.