She passes and with th' invisible spirit talks,
And dallies with the hands of unfamiliar things.

Grid. What wonder now is this

Ambla. Sometimes it wanders the wood, sometimes
The free-flowered air: come softly on !-&c. &c.

From the Evening Post, New York, May 6th.

THE NEW DRAMA OF WITCHCRAFT.-We have received a letter from a correspondent in Philadelphia, touching the new play produced in that city on Monday evening last:

PHILADELPHIA, Tuesday, May 5, 1846. Mr. Murdoch's new play of Witchcraft was performed last evening at the Walnut street theatre, to one of the most crowded houses of the season. The play had been prominently announced and spoken of in several of the morning papers, and had evidently created great expectation in advance. Tier above tier, from the orchestra to the gallery, rose the vast surface of heads. Here we thought was the material to try fully the new play. If it could hold the attention of this crowded body, it would be a success far beyond the approval of the few packed critical friends who generally attend on such occasions. The critics were not wanting either; the intellect of Philadelphia was well represented on the occasion. The curtain rose on a woodland scene in old Salem, and presently Mr. Murdoch appeared in his character of Gideon Bodish. He was never dressed or looked to greater advantage than in his closely fitting russet coat; his attitudes were after his manner exceedingly graceful, his voice music itself. scene after scene, in every act, he drew down repeated applause, as he delivered one passage after another of singular poetic beauty, or fierce indignant eloquence.

In

It was evident from the first moment that the play was wholly unlike the ordinary efforts under the name of the "American Drama." It was bold, confident, original in illustration, and in the incidents and developments of the plot. The stage situations were new. The confirmation of Gideon's doubts of his mother's guilt of witchcraft at the crisis of the play by a species of sacred divination, an augury from a chance opened passage of the Bible, and the solemn introduction of a child to confront the accused in the grand trial scene, as they were managed, were proofs of undoubted genius on the part of the author.The play was sown all over with the happiest poetical expressions, not merely in the leading parts, but with an unaccustomed prodigality on the part of a modern dramatist were thrown away, for stage purposes, on the lips even of the supernumeraries. Take such lines as these in the mouth of the mother, as she solves one of the perplexities of the piece her apparent guilt; not that of witchcraft, but the life-long remorse for the murder of her husband in a duel, whom she might have saved by declaring her innocence, which she was too proud to prove:

He thought that I had sinned
Against his love with that gay paramour,
Who was no more than birds are to the tree
They hover o'er, to me who lived in mine
Own thoughts above suspicion's climbing,

or this illustration, finely delivered by Murdoch, of the dark silent approach of the superstition upon the soul

The night sits on this gloomy heart-
I see an Indian on a hill top standing,
Part of the silent fixedness of things;

He breaks the mighty calm, wherein he stood

Slow striding down the mountain's side.

Swifter and darker as he nears us we regard him,
Flashing and red, woe's living thunder cloud,
And now, and now, he bends above us—

Dusk murder in the very person of itself—
So creeps this hideous witchcraft on me.

Or such bits of description as the following, a perfect picture in the limits of a sentence;

You recollect old Tituba, the shrivelled squaw,

Who wigwamed gloomily by the wood's edge
Some summers past-

or so perfect an illustration as this of the gathering suspicions of his mother's life in Gideon's conversation

Ever in his speech

There lived and moved as in the river stream
The fish, darkly and yet swift gliding
Old Ambla's form,

Yet these were not the chief merits, but accessories only to the dramatic action; they never came to interrupt, but to aid the character and story. The longer single passages, or any just exhibition of the dialogue, would lead me beyond the limits of a letter.

In the general style of the acting-leading parts were taken by Mrs. Wallack, our old favourite Richings, and a very successful comical tipstaff by Chapman -and especially in the grouping and stage appointments no American play that we have seen has appeared to equal advantage. The scenery had been drawn on the spot at Salem, and Mr. Murdoch had been accompanied in his researches for the dress and costume of the period by Rev. Mr. Upham, the author of a book on the Salem Witchcraft. The bill states the costumes to have been "taken from portraits, paintings, &c. in possession of the Salem Historical Library association." The Deacon, a Justice, an old goodwife were admirable.

We have rarely witnessed a performance where the interest excited was better sustained. The uproarious elements in the pit and galleries, of which we were fearful, were subdued to perfect silence; the laugh at the comic characters, the Deacon's bloated presumption and Chapman's comicalities, was quickly changed to the earnest or pathetic as Gideon or the Mother entered the scene. It was a long and satisfactory study. At the close, Mr. Murdoch was loudly called for, made a short speech to the effect that he rejoiced in the warm reception he had received that evening; that he attributed this solely to the merits of the unknown American author, who did not wish to be known as a dramatic writer, and for whom he had pledged to maintain, and would strictly, the anonymous.