se'nnight. Lieutenant-General Sir W. Cockburn is arrived, and occupying a house on the Marine Parade. Admiral Sir John Wells is also in the arrival list. Tuppen's and the Libraries generally, continue to be elegantly and numerously frequented. A Miss Blake, from the Hay Market Theatre, is engaged as a vocalist at Lucombe's. She made her debut on Saturday se'nnight, and was very favourably received. In truth, from the specimen bestowed of her capability, we expect to see this fashionable lounge crowded every fine evening for some time to come. Her voice is mellow, the lower tones descending to a tenor, the volume full, and to good taste, she adds a brilliance of execution, and a distinct utterance not very often surpassed. THE THEATRE. The public were gratified by the re-appearance of Munden, on our stage, on Saturday se'nnight. Indisposition, and a consequent imaginary declension of powers, had induced him to take, what he supposed, a final leave of his friends and admirers in this part of the world, about two years ago-improved health and spirits, in banishing the blue devils, however, have brought about a different result—and never was the manifestation of pleasure more warm and sincere in recovering a lost favourite, than that which displayed itself on this occasion. The veteran, at times, seemed nearly overpowered by the friendly greetings-but it did not incapacitate him from giving a specimen of his remaining talent, with almost his pristine force and excellence. He appeared as Old Rapid, in "A Cure for the Heart Ache," and Dozy, in "Past ten o'clock." That rich vein of comic pleasantry for which he was ever distinguished, is unimpaired-the eye has lost nothing of its quickness, for the acumen of the mind, time has not yet blunted, nor is the expression of the countenance reduced. He limped from the gout— and that was all-but the soul of the unrivalled actor was the same as formerly. He sung two comic songs, and plauditory thunder followed him in both. The house was fashionably and numerously attended—and universal was the unqualified satisfaction expressed. On Tuesday evening, for the first time, Mr. Hamblin appeared as Macbeth, in the tragedy of that name; Macduff, Mr. F. Vining, and Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Brudenell. Among all the plays that were invented by the god-like imagination of Shakspeare, there is not one that is so wonderfully fitted, in its moral bearing upon British society, to amend mankind, as" Macbeth." Our reasons for giving it this pre-eminence are these as the subject is domestic, and as every man can satisfactorily assure himself, by a course of warranted tradition, that such deeds have been, we take, as Britons, a deeper interest in the progress of the story than we can possibly feel at the horrible incidents in " Titus Andronicus," as foreign woes are less afflictive to our senses than the miseries which appertain to our own nation; inasmuch as the chords of the heart are more readily disposed to vibrate with sympathy at the recital of a murder committed at our own threshold, than at the representation of one committed in Illyria: we feel a deeper anxiety for the honour and felicity of a relation, than we can for an alien; and as the population of every nation is but one vast family, the spectator will more easily cling to the developement and consideration of those crimes of high moment, which have debased his native land, than to those excesses of horror, which may have been perpetrated in a distant clime. Hence ariseth the duty of the dramatist to make such propensities, in the auditor, subordinate to the demands of public and private virtue; and allure mankind into the embraces of goodness, by a scenic display of events which concur to prove, that no individual can be happy, who withholds his wishes for the happiness of others; and that even the force and charms of valour, power, conquest, and a diadem, cannot make the possessor great nor enviable, who hath violated the first injunctions of heaven, to gratify a delusive and unwarrantable ambition.— When these didactic truths are strongly illustrated from the stage, as they are in a very wonderful degree in " Macbeth," then the drama becomes one of the best schools for the preservation of moral order; and the fanatic, who is ever ready to magnify its abuses, and conceal its uses, is compelled to suspend his anathema, and confess, that the magic business of the stage may be managed "To make mankind in conscious virtue bold, The popularity of this tragedy cannot be a subject of surprise-it has all the materials of popularity: rapid incident, powerful distinctness of character, and language of the highest rank of poetry. The character of Macbeth is a master-piece; and one, that if it could have been sketched, could scarcely have been sustained by any other hand than Shakspeare's. Daring and irresolute; ambitious and submissive; treacherous and affectionate; superstitious, and careless of the future; a murderer and a penitent; Macbeth is full of that strong contradiction which is to be found nowhere but in Shakspeare and nature. But the character takes a powerful hold upon our affections. As an unmingled, cold, and gloomy murderer, or as the mere subordinate of an ambitious wife, or as a man of high qualities, urged to a furious act by an impulse above his nature, Macbeth would have lost his impression on us but as a compound of all, a perfect interest is excited; and he passes from the scene, leaving a feeling in which pity predominates over justice, and our natural abhorrence of his crimes is sunk in our admiration of the struggles of his virtue. Lady Macbeth is of a prouder order; she is like her Lord, ambitious, and haughtily resolved upon reaching her object by the most daring road. Macbeth, on hearing the promise of the weird sisters, listens with wonder as to a thing in which he could have no share; and when a stronger conviction comes upon him, scarcely ventures to shape the form of his wish. Lady Macbeth seizes the object at once, determines on the throne at all hazards, and looks on the King's murder with a plainness of eye which will not be dazzled nor deterred. When the coming of Duncan is announced, she loses ali consideration of the honour of receiving the King of Scotland under her roof, in the sudden opportunity for his assassination. While Macbeth, a man and a warrior, is trembling and unprepared, his wife is calm and mistress of herself: she receives the monarch with courtly dignity, and turns away to make her husband resolute upon his distruction. The dark and stern forms of this woman's crime, could not have been endured in this broad light; they could not have been acknowledged as in nature. Lady Macbeth would not have been an existence of this world, but for the mighty pencil of Shakspeare. He wraps her round in fierceness and cruelty, he gives her the words of sober, deliberate love of blood: he makes her human, by making her weak; and excites our sympathy by making her conscious of her weakness. The speech in which she multiplies reasons to her husband, for the speedy murder of the king, is full of this conscious weakness. She presses argument on argument, perpetually appeals to her own firmness, exaggerates the dangers of delay, and finishes with a violent and ostentatious acknowledgment of her own courage, which naturally betrays a fearfulness of its reality. She is a woman and a coward; but she is bent upon a purpose which extinguishes and absorbs her timidity for the moment. With this preternatural courage, she would have been a fiend, but with the trepidation of her sex, she is a woman. Her fierceness is made up of sudden efforts, and followed by sudden relaxation. She shrinks from Duncan's murder, from his resemblance to her father while he slept; she braces herself with wine for the hour of horror she is torn with agony and remorse in her sleep; and the only sound of her death is a groan, heard through the palace in all the tumult of trampling warriors, and the roar of assault. There are few men who have not felt the contagious power of fears, or how quickly strong mental agitations extends to the senses. Macbeth's spirit is full of horrid images, till they begin to move upon his eye, and the murderer sees a visionary dagger floating before him, growing more distinct as he gazes on it more eagerly; till this "painting of his fear," hath assumed all the reality that can be given to it by fear; and the regicide's VOL. II. : H imagination sees a dagger palpable, stained with blood, and leading his step to the spot where he is to consummate his crime. This is all admirable,-an evidence of the genius of Shakspeare, which ought to make him immortal if he had never written another line. When Shakspeare conceived the idea of writing the tradegy of " Macbeth," he had the elements of the more mortal parts of that drama presented for his consideration, by Buchannan, Hollingshead, Hector, Boethius, Heywood, Heylin, &c. and, with such aid, the mere writing of the scenes would have been, at best, though a meritorious, yet a human effort. But when he undertook to call the Thracian Hecate from the realms of night and superstition, to superintend and impel the diabolical progress of murder and treason, he felt his own creative power, and incomparable genius, that enabled him "To give to airy nothing A local habitation and a name." As Macbeth, Mr. Hamblin made a very respectable stand, for a first attempt, but he has yet much to learn ere he can give the character its vivid force and dignity. We were pleased to hear him abstain from those false and affected new readings, which not only demonstrate an unbecoming vanity in the actor who presumes to use them, but are detrimental to the truth and beauty of our language. The weightier passages in the tragedy, Mr. Hamblin was successful in, but he was by far too deliberate and gloomy in his utterance of the text generally. Unlike Macready, the speech which follows the announcement of the Queen's death, "She should have died hereafter, &c." he gave with all the feeling that mental agony could dictate-not, as does his named contemporary, hurrying through it with monotonous accents, we know not why nor wherefore. That great master in the art, John Kemble, is evidently the model by which Mr. Hamblin would shape his portraiture; and, with perseverance, he may eventually deserve success. Lady Macbeth has had no adequate representative since the withdrawing of Mrs. Siddons from the stage. The attempt of Mrs. Brudenell evinced talent, but, phsyically, she is unequal to the task. Of all the scenes which, in our limited reading, have met our eye, we know of none that can convey so finished a picture of keen distress, as that wherein Macduff is represented as lamenting the masacre of his wife and children. The woes of Medea, and the agonies of Orestes, are faint in their agency, when compared to this, because their sufferings are not congenial with our own habitudes: their miseries are on stilts, but the anguish of Macduff issues from those domestic troubles which "come home to the bosoms and business of men." In this character, though tragedy is not his forte, much of feeling and discrimination were shewn by Mr. F. Vining-and we pay him no ordinary compliment, when we remark, as a whole, that he sustained it respectably. The house was the reverse of crowded, but the approbation bestowed was sincere and general. At the Theatre, on Wednesday evening, the lovely little pupil, five years old, of Mr. Collins, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. F. Vining, again danced a pas seul, with which the Duke of Cambridge seemed delighted, and was energetic in manifesting his unqualified approbation. TOWN AND COUNTY. William Baulcombe, charged with being concerned with Broad, in uttering the forged notes, purporting to be of the Brighton and Sussex Bank, has had his final examination-in the course of which, he so satisfactorily established an alibi, that, upon his own recognizance of forty pounds, to appear at the assizes, he was liberated from custody. The springs in this town and neighbourhood were never remembered more low than at present-several wells, never known before to be without water, are now empty. It is a curious fact, that some of the wells here, near the Cliff, at all seasons of the year, sink their water as the tide of the ocean flows, and raise it as the tide declines. The same circumstance is observable in some of the wells at Rottingdean. OLD TIMES RENEWED. Mr. John Pitcher, who lately kept the Crown Inn, in Hailsham, has, this Michaelmas, taken a farm in the adjoining parish, called Priesthaws, and hired his servants (as farmers used to do), as in-door servants. The long table is spread in the kitchen, with good farm-house provision, and the master and mistress take their seats at the head of it. Our subscription pack of harriers, for the first day's diversion of the season, threw off, to a field of about forty sportsmen, at Patcham, this day fortnight. The dogs were in good condition, and the sportsmen in high spirits. The weather, however, was only favourable at intervals, but the scent lay well, and hares were almost beyond abundant. The sport turned out remarkably brisk and interesting-but it seemed, at last, more a chace for the spit than the salutary pleasure of exercise. Four hares were killed in as many hours, and a fifth was started, but from the latter, the huntsman sung out" Hold-enough!" and whipped off his dogs. On Wednesday, the same pack threw off on the Race Hill, and on Friday, at the Devil's Dyke—and, for the whole of the season, weather permitting, on similar days, at the several points specified, the said pack will be on duty at ten o'clock a. m. The East Sussex Fox hounds meet on the alternate days, so that |