These ladies, on the other hand, getting wind of the arrival of the Countess, regretted that she should have fallen into the hands of 'so very vulgar people,' and should carry away such' very false impressions of American society.'

The same remarks are usual with respect to every foreigner of title of whom I ever had the honor to hear. There never was one, I think, who, in the opinion of all, saw the 'very cream' of society. My own opinion is, however, that the cream of American society is mostly milk; by which I mean that what there is good in it is pretty evenly distributed throughout the mass, and is quite as apt to be found floating mid-way as in the froth that swims at the top.

The Countess, notwithstanding the hands she was in, was sought after. Mrs. FUDGE and WILHELMINA were sought after at the same time. Mrs. FUDGE, of course, determined upon giving her a grand party. Uncle SOLOMON protested, insisting that there might be some flaw in the woman's character; he did think it looked oddly to take such a trip, even in the company of his son. Madame FUDGE insisted

(for WASHINGTON had informed her) that it was the French way.

Then all I have to say is, madame,' said SOLOMON, tartly, 'it's a d-d odd way!'

WASHINGTON figured grandly at the party; he introduced a new dance with variations, which he had learned at the Ranelagh. The PINKERTONS were present, and were affable with the Countess; they even encouraged WASHINGTON to converse with them. JEMIMA was invited, as being a good French scholar, and she subsequently arranged a conversazione for the Countess, at her mother's small house. The Countess was not proud, and appeared amiable at the conversazione, to the great delight of BRIDGET and of the old lady, her mother.

Mrs. FUDGE had not forgotten the cruel hint of SOLOMON, about the improvement of their present position. She had held a private conversation with WILHELMINA on the subject, in the course of which she had made known the embarrassed position of her father's affairs; she had urged that young lady to make hay while the sun was shining other words, to carry young SPINDLE, if it were possible, by a coup de main.

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WILHELMINA devoted herself for 'the greater part of the evening to the execution of this task; she made extraordinary conversational ventures; but, failing in the end, revenged herself by a spirited flirtation with the Count SALLE, who was there, brilliant as ever, and, it was remarked afterward, particularly coy of advances toward the Countess. He met the approaches of WILHELMINA with unusual readiness and spirit. Serious people may even have remarked certain improprieties in her conduct. It was to be remembered, however, that the Count was a very old friend very.

It must have been about ten o'clock on the following day that Mr. SOLOMON FUDGE and wife sat at breakfast over a broiled chicken, in the basement-room of their Avenue house. Neither son nor daughter had as yet appeared. Late breakfast hours were genteel, and Mrs. FUDGE rather liked late hours. The old people were consulting, in a sulky humor, the events of yesterday, when the maid suddenly came in and

announced, in a frightened way, that Miss WILHELMINA was not in her room, and had not slept in her bed, and was nowhere to be found.

Mrs. FUDGE, with an exclamation of wonder, looked over toward her husband; and the old gentleman, growing pale, looked gloomily back into the face of his wife. There was not much in the countenance of either to give consolation, or to clear up the mystery.

The house was alarmed, and searched throughout. Not the slightest trace could be found of the missing young lady. Circumstances, however, seemed to point to the Count SALLE as a party to this family bereavement. Some of the servants had seen her whispering to the Count at a very late hour; one even had observed her in his company upon the porch of the street-door.

Young WASH., made heroic by his recent Paris experience, swore that he would shoot the Count, and ordered a Colt's pistol to be bought for that purpose. He, however, yielded to the hysterical entreaties of Mrs. FUDGE, and countermanded the order.

My uncle SOLOMON wore an air of more calmness than might have been expected; he seemed to regard the matter as a judgment upon PHOEBE. I think he may have hinted as much; whereupon Mrs. FUDGE renewed her hysterics to such a degree that the family physician was called in.

For my own part, I think it was an event I speak of the elopement that might have been looked for. I think the progress of her education had encouraged a hope of some such brilliant denouement. I think it was only the dashing way in which my cousin WILHELMINA undertook to illustrate her advance upon elegant life.

And should it appear that the Count has given the affair a creditable tone, by a recognition of the marriage ceremony, I am by no means prepared to say that the event would be a disagreeable one to my aunt РИЕВЕ.

RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE MODERN DRAMA.

BY JAMES W. WALL.

THE most extensive and important department of English Literature, in what may be called the Elizabethan period, is the drama. By the drama the age of Shakspeare is chiefly distinguished, not only from all preceding periods, but also, although less decisively, from modern times.

In tracing the history of the drama, it will be necessary to follow the stream to its source; for although aware that the ancient drama has few points of correspondency with the modern, I am not prepared to admit that it is a distinct species by itself. The modern drama owes its existence to the ancient; and when the compositions of Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were driven from the stage, and the sacred dramas of a Father of the Church substituted in their place, there was an imitation of the ancient compositions, and an admission that the popular taste, formed upon the ancient models, must be humored.

In ancient Greece, the first plays began with hymns to the praise of Bacchus; and in this first rude beginning, we have the origin of our modern tragedy. The ancient, like the modern drama, owed its birth to religion. Tragedy, which is derived from two Greek words, signifying the song of the goat, was at first but a sacred hymn. The first cultivator of the vine, whose name was Bacchus, and who was afterward deified under that name as the god of wine, disclosed the secret of his discovery to one of the petty princes of Attica, who happening, one day, to perceive a goat browsing on his plantation of vines, seized him, and offered him a sacrifice to Bacchus. The peasants assembled around assisting in the ceremony, expressing their joy and gratitude by dances and songs. By degrees, the sacrifice grew into a festival, or solemn feast, surrounded on all sides with the pomp and circumstance of religious ceremony. Poets were employed by the magistrates to compose hymns or songs for the occasion. These poets, in process of time, contended at these festivals for a prize; which was nothing more than a goatskin filled with wine. Thespis, from whose name is derived the term 'Thespian,' now applied to theatrical performers, appears to have first introduced at these festivals of Bacchus a person or persons who, in the intervals between the singing of the odes composed for the occasion, relieved the singers, by reciting some historic fable. The chorus was at first a principal part of this festival; but gradually it became nothing more than an ornamental part of the ancient drama.

The actor having appeared upon the scene, and his recitations being more interesting than the songs, he was soon brought forward to play the most prominent part. In process of time these songs, whose original purpose was the praise of the god Bacchus, soon changed in their character, and became auxiliaries to the part recited by the actor; and

from this rude beginning the ancient drama progressed, until it assumed the form and beauty to be found in the plays of Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles.

Eschylus first introduced dialogue, and threw the whole fable into action, improved the scenery and decorations, and at last brought the actors into a regular and well-constructed theatre; raised his heroes on the buskin; invented the masques, and introduced splendid habits, which gave an air of majesty and dignity to the performers. The poet Homer appears to have been the source and fountain of the ancient drama. From his urn, the early Greek dramatists drew golden lights. To him they appear to be indebted for the place, construction, and conduct of their fable, and not unfrequently for the fable itself.

Euripides and Sophocles improved upon Eschylus, until the drama reached its highest perfection in Greece.

It is generally admitted that the ancient Eleusinian mysteries were a kind of sacred drama, exhibited at stated seasons, with a great variety of shows, and solemn pomp. The Hierophants, or high-priests of Ceres, addressed the initiated in a sort of awful prologue, and invited them to begin a new life, as the word initiation seems to imply. The first scene represented this life in a dark valley, in which a number of persons were wandering at random, and conducted by some glimmering of reason; after which, Elysium and Tartarus (the heaven and hell of the ancients) were displayed with all imaginable solemnity, and the whole was contrived, as may be collected from ancient authors, to inculcate by a sensible representation the unity of GOD, which Plato, and other heathen philosophers, not daring to teach to the people, were obliged to express in mysterious discourses and allegories. Even some of the inspired writings have been considered as of the dramatic kind. Bossuet divides the Songs of Solomon into various scenes. The Book of Job, equally valuable for its great antiquity and the noble strain of moral poetry in which it is written, has been esteemed a regular drama ; and Milton tells us, that a learned critic distributed the Apocalypse into several acts, distinguished by a chorus of angels.

All existing evidence seems to prove that every form of dramatic composition, whether of tragedy or comedy, had its origin in religious feasts and ceremonies.

The origin of the modern drama, like the ancient, is to be traced to a religious source. The opinion of Voltaire, that the religious dramas known in the west of Europe by the titles of miracle-plays, and mysteries, first came from Constantinople, has been generally adopted. Upon the decline of the Greek empire in the fourth century, Gregory Nazianzen, a poet and father of the Christian Church, with a view of banishing from the stage the classic and pagan drama, substituted for them his own sacred dialogues, the subjects of which were borrowed from the Old or New-Testament. These plays of the good father could not have possessed much literary merit, or excited much interest, as all of them but one, called Christ's Passion, were lost, when learning revived in Europe. A custom of presenting some event recorded in Scripture, at every solemn festival of the Church, soon prevailed over all Europe. These scriptural pieces were called mysteries; and in the thirteenth