The Black Domino, an opera; Barbara, Macintosh and Co. (written for Power); The Magic Bell (acted at the Lyceum), and Love Extempore, must all be considered as rather below than on a level with Kenney's usual mark. In the latter farce, at the Haymarket, David Rees obtained a good and unexpected opportunity in consequence of the retirement of Liston. Like many other authors whose principal estate is derived from the pen, Kenney frequently wasted his talents on uncongenial and unworthy subjects, and wrote at railroad speed, under the pressure of the res angusta domi.

When Sheridan Knowles's John of Procida was brought out at Covent Garden, in 1840, Kenney furnished the Surrey Theatre with a tragedy on the same subject, entitled The Sicilian Vespers, in which the leading character was sustained with great reputation by poor Elton, who was lost in the illfated steamer Pegasus, on a passage from Leith to London. She struck on the Gold Rock, and all on board perished, with the exception of six. The last production of Kenney's pen was a serious drama, entitled Infatuation, a Tale of the French Empire, which has never been printed, and was only repeated four times. It was written in 1845, to display the peculiar tálents of Miss Cushman, then acting at the Princess Theatre. In the foregoing list, we have enumerated fortyone dramas, and it is very possible that some have been omitted.

Kenney died on the 1st of August, 1849, being then in his seventieth year. It is amazing how he lived so long, seeing that his health for a long period had been broken by severe and complicated illness. Amongst other physical afflictions, he suffered cruelly from a nervous affection, which gave his appearance and movements such an air of eccentricity, that more than once he was taken for a deranged patient escaped from an asylum. He married the widow of Thomas Holcroft, the author of The Road to Ruin, &c., who survived him. By her, he left a family of two sons and four daughters. Mrs. Kenney's father was a French writer and politician of the revolutionary era, of considerable celebrity-Louis Sebas

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tian Mercier. He is principally remembered by his severe criticisms on Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, contained in a work called "Essai sur l'art Dramatique," and by his "Tableau de Paris. Mercier was a member of the Convention, sat on the trial of Louis XVI., and voted with the more moderate minority who proposed the imprisonment instead of the execution of their unfortunate monarch.

Kenney had received large sums for his writings, but he was not in flourishing circumstances. His friends, during his last long illness, bestirred themselves to get him up a benefit at Drury-lane. Mrs. Kenney had been preceptress to Lady Palmerston, and through that channel, many of the leading nobility became warmly interested. He died suddenly on the appointed day, but the fact was not made public, and the behefit proceeded. A large sum, amounting to nearly five hundred pounds, was thus secured to the family. As a proof that his faculties were not impaired by either age, illness, or constant exertion, a few days only before his decease, although lying in all the agony of approaching dissolution, on the bed from which he never rose with life, he wrote a poetical address, to be spoken by Mrs. Glover, but she was unable to commit it to memory within the appointed time. His own farce of Love, Law, and Physic, was one of the pieces selected for the benefit night; the remainder of the performances consisting of The Beggar's Opera, and The Waterman.

MARIA EDGEWORTH, and SIDNEY MORGAN, are names which will ever be honourably associated with Irish literature, to which their contributions are as numerous as they are varied and excellent. Both these lively writers, who draw national character with such a truthful pencil, might have been expected to shine with peculiar lustre in the dramatic walk, had they trained their steps to pursue its windings. But their taste and natural bent led them more habitually into different paths. Amongst the published works of Miss Edgeworth, we find two comic dramas, entitled Love and Law, and The Rose, Thistle, and Shamrock. Both are exclusively Irish, and it does not appear

that they were ever intended or offered for representation. We scarcely think they would have succeeded had the experiment been tried. The Hibernian idiom is infinitely amusing when introduced as an episode; but when it forms the staple of an entire dramatis persona, the peculiar flavour is weakened by repetition, and becomes as tiresome and monotonous as the Scotch variety in Allan Ramsay's northern pastoral. The Gentle Shepherd, as originally written, was acted in 1777, at the Haymarket, by an entire Scottish company. They might as well have exhibited in pantomime. A play that requires eighteen pages of glossary could not be otherwise than unintelligible to a London audience. Miss Edgeworth was incapable of writing anything absolutely without merit, but her dramas would not have rendered her name immortal. Lady Morgan, when Miss Owenson, produced a comic opera, entitled The First Attempt, or The Whim of the Moment, which was performed in Dublin, on the 4th of March, 1807, and attended with great success; but we do not know whether or not it has ever been printed. The music was composed by Tom Cooke. In her subsequent writings we find two volumes of Dramatic Scenes from Real Life." LADY CLARKE, the sister of Lady Morgan, is the authoress of a comedy called The Irishwoman, acted also in Dublin, in 1818, and published by Colburn, in the following year.

The late EARL OF MOUNTNORRIS, who was born in 1769, and died in 1844, was said by his friends to have written a tragedy (when Lord Valentia) full of beauty and sublimity, but more calculated for the closet than for

the present stage. We have never heard the name mentioned, nor has the drama ever appeared before the public in any shape. His lordship travelled extensively in Eastern lands, in pursuit of political, geographical, and botanical knowledge, principally to gratify his curiosity, and gave the

result to the world in three volumes, quarto, in 1809, under the title of "Voyages and Travels to India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia, and Egypt, in the years 1802-6." This work was much read at the time, and is still referred to as a book of authority.

We have given a full biographical memoir of TYRONE POWER in earlier numbers of this MAGAZINE; it is therefore unnecessary here to repeat what has been already written. We have only to name the dramatic productions which entitle him to a place in the present list. They are five in numberviz., The Married Lovers, St. Patrick's Eve, How to Pay the Rent, O'Flanagan and the Fairies,* and Paddy Carey. These were all written to increase his own stock of characters in the line to which he had legitimately succeeded, and are to be estimated rather as well constructed, and effective for acting purposes, than as aspiring to any ambitious pretension in a literary view. The three first are printed. The correct manuscripts of the two last were lost with the owner in the illstarred President. Married Lovers was the least successful. When produced in Dublin, in the summer of 1831, it was coldly welcomed; but as usual, when the curtain fell, Power was called for, to receive the gratulations of the audience, more in his character of actor than author. As he retired bowing, under a volley of applause, a friendly wag in the gallery called out confidentially, in an audible whisper, "Power, don't take that for your benefit!" St. Patrick's Eve, as an historical drama, possesses more than ordinary interest.

While reverting to Power, we are reminded of the Irish Tutor, so inimitably acted by him, and of the Groves of Blarney, with which he inseparably associated LORD GLENGALL's amusing farce. Few modern pieces of this class have enjoyed such enduring popularity, which is likely to continue as long as the stage possesses any actor capable of representing the peculiarities of Irish character with reasonable

excellence. The Irish Tutor, which came out at Covent Garden on the 28th November, 1822, was acted above thirty times during that season, the original representative being Charles Connor, who had a rich conception, and an easy vein of natural humour, but he was ungifted with the power of singing, and the deficiency interfered much with his professed walk. The farce had been given by the author to Abbott, when he was joint manager with Farley, at Cheltenham, and was first acted at that idle resort of fashion and valetudinarianism. The subject (as nineteen out of twenty in the modern list are) is from the French; but the character of Dr. O'Toole is, of course, a new and a very happy creation. Before the close of the same season (1822-3), Lord Glengall produced a second farce at Covent Garden, entitled Cent. per Cent., or the Masquerade, but the success was very inferior to that which attended the first. It was felt to be too long, and the Irishman, Dr. O'Rafferty (again played by Connor), was not made sufficiently prominent. In the year following, WV. Abbott, then manager of the Dublin Theatre, endeavoured to revive Cent. per Cent. in the Irish metropolis, but it was scarcely tolerated, and not repeated a second time. In 1829, Lord Glengall brought out, at Drury-lane, a comedy in five acts, called Follies of Fashion, which had a run of eleven nights. The plot is slight, but the characters are well contrasted, and the dialogue flows agreeably. Without soaring into wit, it seldom descends to insipidity. The three pieces of the noble earl are printed, and form a respectable volume on the shelves of a dramatic collection.

The EARL OF LANESBOROUGH (when the Hon. Mr. Butler Danvers) wrote two dramas, Busy Peter, a comic interlude, and The Bohemian, or America in 1776, a play, in five acts. They were acted in Dublin, the first in 1826, the second in 1833, and were extremely well received. Both were presents from the author to the respective managers, Mr. W. Abbott and Mr. Calcraft-an act of literary disinterestedness on the part of amateur authors much to be commended, and worthy of more general imitation than it has yet received.

On the 23rd of November, 1831, a very remarkable play was produced in

the Dublin theatre, under the title of The Warden of Galway. The author's name was not at first announced, but he was known to be the REV. EDWARD GROVES. The subject is historical, and to be found at full length, and authentically related, in Hardiman's history, but has been frightfully travestied by Prince Puckler Muskau, in his legend of travels. The event on which the tragedy is built occurred in the year 1493, and the house is still standing (decorated with a skull and crossbones) from the window of which the culprit is said to have been suspended. That a father, at the inexorable demand of justice, should sentence his only son to death, and actually execute him with his own hands, is an instance of public duty superseding natural affection, which casts the patriotic stoicism of the elder Brutus completely into the shade. The subject is eminently suited for a tragedy; but many good judges thought that the catastrophe, although softened on the stage, would be found to exceed "salutary terror," and to verge on the repulsive extreme which Horace so emphatically denounces in the supper of Thyestes, and the murder of her children by Medea. The result far surpassed the most sanguine expectations of the manager and author. No play was ever more rapturously received, or more unanimously applauded. It filled the theatre for sixteen repetitions; and although supported by the stock company alone, produced a much larger receipt to the treasury than the combined efforts of many leading "stars," who exhibited their radiance on the intervening nights. The fourth representation was for the benefit of the author, under the immediate patronage of Daniel O'Connell, then in the full tide of his power and popularity. The receipts exceeded £400, and at least £60 was excluded from want of room. During a long series of years The Warden of Galway continued to be acted occasionally in Dublin, and has been repeated altogether above fifty times. It has never been printed; and a short synopsis of the plot and incidents, closely followed from history in all leading points, may not be unacceptable to many of our readers who are unacquainted with the tragedy, which is not likely to be revived with the changes of theatrical dynasties and generations.

Galway was, at a comparatively early period, a great entrepôt for foreign merchants trading to the British Islands.* These were, for the most part, Spaniards, who, in the fifteenth century, engrossed much of the commerce of western Europe. Their piety induced them to obtain the appointment of a spiritual head of their own, to be chosen by the suffrages, lay and clerical, of thirteen families, called "the Tribes ;" all of which are still extant, in lineal succession, except the De Fonts, who are only represented in the female line by the present Sir William de Bathe. Sometimes it has happened that the Warden was also Mayor. The author of the tragedy unites the civil and spiritual titles, not wishing, as we may suppose, to introduce into so deeply serious a play the comic title of the chief of the municipality, which is usually mixed up, upon the stage, with all that is absurd and ludicrous in society, to such an extent that the appellation has become synonymous with heavy and unintellectual mediocrity. Churchhill can find nothing more detractive to say of one of the victims of his satire than that

"Prudent dullness mark'd him for a mayor;"

and Shakspeare makes the chief magistrate of London exclaim, in Henry the Sixth, when roused from his afternoon nap to keep the peace between Duke Humphrey and Cardinal Beaufort:

"Good God! that nobles should such stomachs bear! I myself fight not once in forty year."

One of the tribes of Galway was, and is still, the family of Lynch. In 1493, Walter Lynch became mayor, and according to the dramatist, Warden of Galway; but in this association of authority fact gives way to fiction. The son and only child of this Walter, Roderick Lynch, and a nephew, named Velasquez, had proceeded to Spain, some time before, on a visit to the father of the latter, and partly to transact with him some important mercantile business. While abroad, Roderick fell into the vices of the nobility of Castile. He gamed, lost, and spent that portion of his father's

fortune which had been entrusted to his care. At length the period for his return arrived, and, accompanied by his ardent friend and cousin, Velas quez, he sailed for home. Previous to their departure, however, the two young men had entered into a mutual compact by which the survivor, in case an accident or fatality should befal either, was to become the heir and executor of the other. During the voyage, Roderick, brooding over his misfortunes, the self-sought ruin of his inheritance, and the dread of certain discovery, grew melancholy and abstracted as the vessel neared the Irish coast. One placid night, when within a few days' sail of Galway, while Velasquez was sitting on the poop,

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gazing," as the author eloquently and poetically paints the scene, in silent transport on the bright theatre of moon, of stars, and sea," Roderick took the helm from the pilot, whom he ordered below. The only persons on deck were the two youths and a ser vant of Roderick, named Connor, who lay unobserved upon a sail toward the forecastle; when, on a sudden, Roderick-" no notice given, no word exchanged"-darted upon the ususpecting Velasquez and plunged him in the deep. The only mortal witness to this foul deed was Connor. On reach

ing Galway, the first person Connor met after his wife, Evelyn, was Walter Lynch, with the city officers, making proclamation of the installation of the new Warden and Mayor. The terms of the proclamation, which decreed the punishment of any crime upon those who concealed the guilty, produced a terrible impression upon the servant's mind, and he revealed to Father Dominic, a monk, in the presence of his own wife, the horrible secret. The monk narrated the confession thus openly made to the Warden, who had but a little before arranged to marry his returned son to his long betrothed kinswoman, and Walter's ward, Anastasia, on that very day. The father, subduing his natural feelings, and conquering his paternal agony, resolved to discharge his painful duty as guardian of the land. He accused Roderick of the crime, and when the delinquent fenced, and declaimed indignantly, in