One character our enumeration has omitted—­that of Mr. Winnington, who being a lawyer, stock and marriage broker, is the bosom friend and confident of every character in the piece, and, consequently, is the only person who has intercourse with the two sets of characters.  This is a part patched up to be the sticking plaster which holds the two plots together—–­the flux that joins the mettlesome Captain Dangerfield (son of the Lord) to the sentimental citoyenne Barbara Bearbinder.  In fact, Winnington is the author’s go-between, by which he maketh the twain comedies one—­the Temple Bar of the play—­for he joineth the “Court” with the “City.”

So much for construction:  now for detail.  The legitimate object of comedy is the truthful delineation of manners.  In life, manners are displayed by what people do, and by what they say.  Comedy, therefore, ought to consist of action and dialogue. ("Thank you,” exclaims our reader, “for this wonderful discovery!”) Now we have seen that in “Court and City” there is little action:  hence it may be supposed that the brilliancy of the dialogue it was that tempted the author to brush away the well-deserved dust under which the “Discovery” and the “Tender Husband” have been half-a-century imbedded.  But this supposition would be entirely erroneous.  The courtiers and citizens themselves were but dull company:  it was chiefly the acting that kept the audience on the benches and out of their beds.

Without action or wit, what then renders the comedy endurable?  It is this:  all the parts are individualities—­they speak, each and every of them, exactly such words, by which they give utterance to such thoughts, as are characteristic of him or herself, each after his kind.  In this respect the “Court and City” presents as pure a delineation of manners as a play without incident can do—­a truer one, perhaps, than if it were studded with brilliancies; for in private life neither the denizens of St. James’s, nor those of St. Botolph’s, were ever celebrated for the brilliancy of their wit.  Nor are they at present; if we may judge from the fact of Colonel Sibthorp being the representative of the one class, and Sir Peter Laurie the oracle of the other.

This nice adaptation of the dialogue to the various characters, therefore, offers scope for good acting, and gets it.  Mr. Farren, in Sir Paladin Scruple, affords what tradition and social history assure us is a perfect portraiture of an old gentleman of the last century;—­more than that, of a singular, peculiar old gentleman.  And yet this excellent artist, in portraying the peculiarities of the individual, still preserves the general features of the class.  The part itself is the most difficult in nature to make tolerable on the stage, its leading characteristic being wordiness. Sir Paladin, a gentleman (in the ultra strict sense of that term) seventy years of age, is desirous of the character of un homme