back to something like a primitive simplicity
of manors. But if anybody wishes to know
more than is here set down of the working
of the Lord Chancellor's Land Transfer Act,
and the expenses thereof, and to read also
thereon the commentaries of a friendly
barrister, let him turn to an edition of the act just
published by Mr. Downing Bruce, and whatever
question lie may wish to ask, there he will find
clearly, fully, and most intelligibly answered.

SMALL-BEER CHRONICLES.

THERE is so much to do in the way of
Registering Deaths, that I have given up all hope of
getting to either Births or Marriages. I had
intended to have got on to these at once, but
happening to come in contact with a friend of
great erudition in matters connected with the
ancient Drama, and this friend happening to fall
into a lamentation over certain theatrical
deficiencies of this our day, it was suddenly borne
in upon my mind, and this with the effect of a
great shock and surprise, that—The Legitimate
Drama is Dead!

Ancient friends, whose births were registered
when George the Third was king, when London
was lighted by means of oil, when the sedan-
chair yet oscillated in the streets, when the
pigtail yet vibrated on the coat-collar—you who
remember the majestic Kembles, the inspired
Siddons, the solemn Young, the melting O'Neil,
the passionate Kean—you who were present at
O. P. riots, and who woke up one morning to
hear that " Drury Lane " was burnt to the
ground—draw near in mourning garments and
join, in spirit, in those funeral rites with which
it becomes us to inter that stately institution—
The Drama of the Past! And you, who
remember not these things, but whose memories
can yet go back to the days of patent theatres,
to the time when Shakespeare's plays were
acted by a company so complete that each
small part was filled by one who was a master
in his way, when Touchstone and Adam, as
well as Jacques and Rosalind, stood before
you on the stage to carry out, not dissipate, the
vision of your chamber-reading—you who
remember Macready, whose young hearts have
risen in sympathy when the old king cursed his
wicked daughters, or when the great Roman dealt
so gently with " the boy that played the music"
—come you, too, and stand beside the open
tomb into which we must now commit—to rise
no more —The Drama of our Youth!

Come, let us lay it out on Ophelia's bier, let
us compose its limbs in decent rest, let it have
the " bringing home of book and candle," let us
deck it with flowers, and let the " churlish
priest," with salmon-coloured tonsure and dirty
alb, speak the obsequies, and perform " what
ceremony else" becomes the reverend defunct.

The tomb is capacious, and will hold no end
of properties. In with them. In with Hamlet's
inky cloak, and Yorick's skull, and Ophelia's
flowers, and the staff of Polonius! In with
Othello's dye-bottle, and Roderigo's purse.
There is room for Macbeth's goblet, for the
round target of Macduff, for the witch's
caldron, for Fleance's torch. Room for Richard's
hump, for the nob upon his leg, and for his hat
and feathers. In with them all. In with Friar
Laurence's grey gown and the Nurse's crutch,
and Juliet's balcony. In with Falstaff's stuffing,
with Titania's spangles, and Bottom's ass's
head.

Nor are these obsequies complete unless we
give a decent burial, too, to other more spiritual
"properties" than these. There are the stage
traditions—shall they have no share in this great
ceremony? Shall they be left, to haunt the
green-room, to hover about the half-obliterated
scenes of ancient Drury? Not so, for worlds.
Let us sing their requiem, and give them decent
burial, too. In with them into the tomb as
well.

There was lago's leer, that sidelong glance
which proved him such a shallow hypocrite, and
for which, as well as Cassio's hiccup, there is
plenty of room in this yawning sepulchre.
There were several distinct but established ways
of walking, too, for which we have accommodation:
Ophelia's walk, looking back as she
retired up—as well known to us all, as that prodigious
hobble of Polonius, or the pacing of
Richard—as he limped up and down before the
float—always pulling on a gauntlet, and scowling
over his shoulder at the gallery. There is
room, too, for the peculiar (and perhaps
aggravating) tunes to which Ophelia used to sing, for
Rosalind's laugh, and (we are tumbling things
in as they come to hand) for a peculiar pat on the
back many times repeated, with which lago used
to hustle Roderigo off the stage when
recommending him to put money in his purse. All
these old traditionary matters, and a hundred
others, must now be consigned to oblivion, as
relics of a bygone time. The Legitimate Drama
is Dead! It's occupation's gone. " Lay it in
the earth, and from its fair and unpolluted
flesh let" Entertainments, " Spring," and Colleen
Bawns, and Peep o' Days attain a giant growth!

Enough of this poetical style. It ill becomes
a Chronicler of Small-Beer, and we will drop it.

There is not—to my knowledge—a single
theatre in London at this present writing where
Shakespeare is performed, except, perhaps, at
Sadler's Wells, where the Swan of Avon
(probably for the convenience of being near the
water of the New River) has resided long.
But soon, doubtless, even Sadler's Wells will
have given that stately bird notice to quit, and
so it will wing its flight away on steady pinions,
I know not whither. To the colonies, perhaps.

For some time it has been thought needful
to find some excuse for playing Shakespeare.
If he were acted, it was, so to speak, with an
apology. A new actor has mastered the
enormous difficulty of so learning a foreign tongue
as to speak its poetry. This novelty will carry
down Shakespeare once again. Before this, it was
found that an antiquarian research of no ordinary
sort would make the old dish palatable.
By making each play a sort of commentary on