An Account of the Value of all Imports into, and all Exports from, 1809, 7,129,507 11 1 5,696,897 5 5 235,694 6 113 1810, 7,471,417 5 1 5,408,910 19 94 330,933 5 4 Note-The real value of Irish Produce and Manufactures exported in the Year ending the 5th January, 1810, computed at the Average Prices current, amounted to £11,464,265 8 24 Custom-House, Dublin, 2d March, 1810. R. MARSHALL, Inspector-General of Imports and Exports. THE DRAMA. Ir we shall not have this year to record the revival of dramatic genius in England, the events, of which it will be our duty to give the history, are perhaps more important, as they furnish indications of the national mind, not only such as a theatre never gave birth to before, but such as were never before believed to be in the power of a place of amusement to engender. The deplorable catastrophe of Drury-Lane Theatre, which at once wrecked the hopes and fortunes of so many unfortunate sufferers, constitutes a prominent era in our record; but still more interesting are the events which took place in the sister establishment; so that it is difficult to decide, whether the destruction of Drury-Lane, or the resurrection of Covent-Garden, fill the mind with the most painful reflections. Compared with these, uninteresting indeed must be the little every-day journal of first appearances and new pieces, which, in point of chronology, take the precedence of these more important events, and which we shall therefore dispatch as concisely as possible.. DRURY-LANE THEATRE. Resuming our chronicle of the theatrical season 1808-9, from the commencement of the latter of those years, the first novelty we have to record at this theatre is the comedy of Man and Wife, or More Secrets than One, by Mr Arnold, the son of the doctor of music of that name, and a gentleman not altogether new to the art of writing for the stage. The first nodus in the plot of this piece, the incident of" changing children," is as old as the oldest gest in the British Museum, and the second is literally copied from the Vicar of Wakefield: nor does the character of the play put the plot to the blush. Helen Worrit, the heroine, is a most unnatural delineation, and calls for the louder exposure, inasmuch as the author has evidently laboured it and thought much of it, as did perhaps its personator, Mrs Jordan, through whose interest the play was commended to the stage. The character of Helen is perhaps the most incongruous compound that was ever exhibited on our motley stage. The young lady is partly a hoyden, partly a shrew, partly a child of nature, and partly a malapert. The fact seems to be, that Mr Arnold has found a flippant kind of impudence a more obedient spirit than wit, and his delineation would have been very accurate, had he intended to expose the mistake in Helen Worrit; but she is evidently intended by the author for a real wit, and her puny attempts are intended to have every effect of the purest, keenest, and most fanciful satire. The dialogue of this play is, for the most part, insipid; and, when it does attempt to soar above its usual level, it as often mistakes bluster for dignity as it does flippancy for wit. Its happiest recourse is to clap-trap, by giving almost every speaker something generous, or something loyal, to say, and thus begging the question of the audience, who, in a play like the present, are willing to be careless whether such sentiments are in character or not. Mr Arnold generally contrives that his performers shall make their exits with aclap-trap, a point, or a pun; and he has been behind the scenes long enough to estimate the effect of this recipe. The merit of the piece chiefly consists in a little dramatic skill exhibited in the arrangement of the scenes, and the conduct of the play. We have been credibly informed that the scene in which the loyal sailor is introduced, was inserted by Mr Sheridan. If this be true, for emphasis; and was reduced to the necessity of forcing out all his words, like successive guns in a feu· de-joye. Mr Wright's appearance was, we believe, a mere experiment, as he has since retired to his original profession of a lecturer. On the 9th of the month, was produced the Unconscious Counterfeit, a new "comedy in two acts," as it. was called, from the pen of Mr Grefullhe, one of the translators of the Portrait of Cervantes, and the same gentleman who but two days before had been fortunate enough to procure the performance of another farce of his by the rival company, called, Is he a Prince? Mr Grefullhe we understand to be a young foreigner of very considerable property, who has settled in this coun "O what a noble mind is here o'er- try. thrown!" The run of the comedy of Man and Wife was interrupted on the 1st of February, for the purpose of introducing to a London stage, in the character of Cato, Mr Wright, lately a professor of elocution at Edinburgh, and a performer in Mr Beaumont's company at Aberdeen. Elocution is all that can be looked for in such a character as Cato; but, however excellent Mr Wright's theory may be, his practice is laboured and stiff. His personal drawbacks are heavy and various; his voice is harsh, his action ungainly, and his countenance susceptible of little expression: he has a perverse bend of the wrist, and throws out his arms either horizontally with his shoulders, like a crucifix, or behind his back, like Catalani or Collini, when they are driving some terrified opera lover before them with the climax of a bravura. He was so loud in his general declamation, that he left his voice no room This farce was well received, but it bears a considerable family resemblance to Mr Grefullhe's twin production. The character of the Bailiff, Twitcher, is copied from his namesake, Twitch, in the Good-natured Man; but is nevertheless drawn by no vulgar hand, or rather by a hand that has nicely copied vulgarity. It was dressed, looked, and played by Mr G. Smith with matchless slang. The character of Dashport afforded Mr Elliston one of the best displays' of his dry humour and grave impudence we ever witnessed. On the 14th February, "A Monody on the Death of Sir John Moore,” from the pen of Mr M. G. Lewis, was spoken by Mrs Powell. There was nothing very remarkable in the composition; but after having been repeated once or twice, it was suppressed by order of the Lord Chamberlain, and was published accordingly with that recommendation. We are now drawing towards the distressing catastrophe, which may be truly said to have "eclipsed the gaiety of the nation, and diminished the stock of harmless amusement." On the 23d of February was produced, from the pen of Mr Ward, the secretary to the board of management, and from the piano-forte of Mr Bishop, a new opera, in three acts, called the Circassian Bride. The action is occasioned by the wars of the Tartars and the Circas. sians, in which, by a new sort of " modo me Thebis," three English persons are 'made to interfere. For the purpose of extorting applause from the national feeling, instead of the national taste, two of these are sailors, who were made to give us frequent assurances by their words of that courage which we know English sailors to possess only by their deeds. Mr Mathews's first song, "In England they tell us," is an easy and humorous versification of Phædrus's fable," Repente Calvus," by Mr James Smith; Mr Mathews's second song was from the pen of Mr Theodore Hook. The former of these songs was saved from the general wreck of the opera, and has since formed one of the main planks of Mr Arnold's opera of the Maniac. The music of the Circassian Bride has been published, and is in many places original and beautiful in the highest degree. There is a quintette in the second act of the greatest merit; and Mr Braham and Miss Lyon's first duet is not only excellent in itself, but admirably adapted to the style of its singers. We trust that Mr Bishop will hereafter find a better vehicle than the Circassian Bride for such valuable compositions: On the evening of Friday the 24th of February, a period of little more than five months having elapsed since the burning of the Covent-Garden house, the whole of the magnificent pile of Drury-Lane Theatre was utterly destroyed by fire. About half past ten o'clock at night, an appearance of fire was perceived at a window on the second story of the theatre, facing Russell-street, which continued some time without exciting any suspicion; but in less than a quarter of an hour the fire spread in one unbroken flame over the whole of the immense pile, extending from Brydges street to Drury Lane; so that the pillar of fire was not less than 450 feet in breadth. In a very few minutes all that part of the theatre, together with the front row of boxes, was on fire, and the rapidity of the flames was such, that before twelve o'clock the whole interior of the house was one blaze. The theatre was at this time left to its fate, and the appearance was awfully and tremendously grand. Never before did we behold so immense a body of flame, and the occasional explosions that took place were sublime beyond description. About thirty minutes after the commencemement of the conflagration, the statue of Apollo, which surmounted the building, fell into the pit; and soon afterwards the whole of the roof fell in also. The reservoir of water on the top of the theatre was like a bucket-full to the volume of fire upon which it fell, and had no visible effect in allaying the fury of the rival element. When the leaden cistern fell in, it produced a violent concussion, and the burning matter which it forced up into the air resembled a shower of rockets. As for the iron curtain, which was intended to save at least one half of the theatre, it had been long ago found so infirm and intractable, that it was removed. The interior was |