From the New York Daily Times.

  THE galleries and boxes were crowded the other night, and the pit fairly filled, of the "National," to hear a new thing—"Uncle Tom's Cabin," dramatized. The third tier had the usual collection of sailors and "Short-boys," and the pit, though not so full as in Winter, when the boys come in for warmth and shelter, showed a very attentive audience of ragged, dirty lads—the representatives of that unknown multitude who swarm through the low streets and in the drinking-cellars of the great City—newsboys, baggage-smashers, candy-sellers, young factory-hands, chip-boys—children, often, who have no home, who know nothing of the Church and the School, who come to the Theatre as the only agreeable and cheerful place they can enter of an evening. The play opened with the appearance of George and Eliza in their parting conversation. George, in default of not being a mulatto, is represented as very red in the face, and his wife is a very pretty white girl, obviously the favourite actress and the heroine of the play. The scene is not especially different from most plays, where lover and mistress part.

  In the next, Shelby and the slave-trader bargain feebly about Eliza's child, who is also a little red-faced boy. We feared the whole play was to be represented in this wild manner, and the great point of it to be overlooked. But the next scene set it right; and with the original artistic intention of the story, came back to the interest of the boys, who had not been applauding much thus far. Eliza goes by night to Uncle Tom's cabin to tell him that he is sold. Aunt Chloe, an old black woman, in night gown, and with a candle, comes out and talks in a high, screeching voice, which at once sets the boys laughing. Uncle Tom is a strong, black, labouring man, with an accent which, in the theatre, is associated always with the comic. It seemed almost certain he could not be well given. He would either be a camp-meeting preacher, and overdo the matter, or he would be so ignorant as to make his religious sentiments ridiculous. In such a place as the National, Uncle Tom's piety must be travestied.

  His very first words, however, showed that a good hand had the part. The accent, a broad and natural negro accent, but the voice deep and earnest—so earnest, that the first laugh at his nigger words, from the pit, died away in deep stillness. "No," said he, "I can't run away. Let her go—it's her right. If I must be sold, le'b me sold—Mass'r allers found me on the spot. I nebber hab broke my trust, and nebber will. The Lord be wid you, poor thing!" and the old man blessed her.

  In the next scene a new character appears, a mixture of several of Mrs. STOWE'S, a long-haired, strong thundering Kentuckian, who is drinking hot whisky in a tavern by the river, when Eliza rushes in, in panting flight with her child. This is the old favourite stage character, and quite as much with the Bowery boys as with any. A rough, swearing, storming fellow with a real soft, good heart at bottom, who shoves Eliza unceremoniously into a small room, but will be "tetotally chawed up into ten thousand small pieces, if he ever lets any of them cussed nigger-catchers touch a hair of her head!" While he is there, the villain of the play comes in, a lawyer who is helping to catch niggers—who, with the regular slave-traders, are painted, if possible, blacker than in the original. They catch a glimpse, at length, of Eliza, through the windows, and rush out helter-skelter after her. The boys are now wrought up to the highest pitch—and when, finally, Eliza is seen with her child, sailing across a blue river on a piece of paste-board ice, and the slave-hunters are shivering and shaking their whips on the shore, one grand cheer goes up from pit and galleries.

  There is another tavern now, with the Kentuckian chewing tobacco, and the nervous Mr. Wilson. They spy, at length, the notice on the walls, of "A Runaway Slave"—and the Kentuckian spits on it, with "That's what I think of that!" Whereat again the boys of the pit are convulsed with delight. George Harris now appears disguised, and holds his conversation with Mr. Wilson.

  The audience are, by this time, well absorbed in it. Perhaps the actor knows he is uttering real sentiments of these times—for he speaks with an unusual spirit. The caps wave, and the "Hey" sounds with almost every sentence, at words which would be hissed down in most public meetings, and be coldly received in the churches—but which, somehow, seem to strike some strange chord in the dirty, ragged audience.

  "Why are you sorry, sir?" says George.

  "Because you are setting yourself against the laws of your country," Mr. Wilson replies.

  "My country! What country have I but the grave? I appeal to God Almighty. I'm willing to go with the case to Him, and ask Him if I do wrong to seek my freedom." * * * *

  "Mr. Wilson, I do run a risk. I know it;" and he shows his pistols. "Down South I never will go. No! if it comes to that, I can earn myself at least six feet of free soil—the first and last I shall ever own in Kentucky!" [Enthusiastic cheers.]

  "George, what has brought you out so wonderfully? You are another man."

  "Because I am a free man!" [Great cheers.]

  The Kentuckian turns Quaker, for the sake of a girl he is in love with, and when the slave-hunters appear on the track of Harris and Eliza, helps them to escape. In the final encounter, when the slave-hunter is rolled down the cliffs by the Quaker, and Harris resolves to die for his freedom, the whole theatre sounds with the cheers again.

  Still, favourite as these spirited scenes are to "the boys," it is evident a deeper feeling is touched by all the later scenes.

  Eva appears a beautiful child, who acts her part so strangely well, that the boys might well think a being from another sphere was there. It only needs a natural child's voice to utter some of those sentiments of universal humanity, which are put into Eva's mouth, to carry away any audience. Topsy is her foil-wielder, and more tangle-haired, and moping and grinning than in the original; and with a touch—showing an artist's hand—of additional bitterness, "cos she's a nigger!" She seems, as the play goes on, the very Pariah of our society. In the scene, where Eva asks her, "Don't you love anybody, Topsy?" and she says, "she never had no father and mother," and Eva finally throws her arms about her, and says, "Poor child! I love you! I love you because you haven't had any father or mother, or friends; because you've been a poor, abused child!" I saw several ragged cuffs going up almost unconsciously to dirty eyes, where tears had not often been.

  Either by design, or necessarily, by the very artistic arrangement of the story, the religious and humane sentiments were the most strongly brought out.

  St. Clare, who is of course by fairly done, a stage gentleman merely—he was never applauded more than when he shows Miss Ophelia the absurdity of the professed Christianity, which sends missionaries to the heathen, but will not even try to convert the poor Topsy's at home. With all his bandinage, too, the genuine respect for religion is apparent throughout, as intended in the original.

  Tom's part, difficult as it is, was carried through admirably. In his remonstrance with his master about drinking, where he says, "Mass'r isn't good to himself. * * * Oh, I'm afraid it will be the loss of all—ALL—body and soul; the Good Book says, 'It biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.'"—there was after it the deepest stillness—almost solemnity.

  The closing scenes of Eva's life were managed with singular judgment. Eva and Tom sit together by the banks of a lake, and repeat the Methodist hymns; and when Eva asks about the New Jerusalem, and sings,

and points to the sky—"I'm going there, to the spirits bright, Tom"—the boys do not even dare to applaud, and scarce a sound is heard in the house.

  The death scene even was not revolting, but represented quietly and vividly; and when Tom, kneeling, says triumphantly, "Bless the Lord, master! it's over—all over! she has the crown—the victory!" and St. Clare and the rest sink their faces in the bed where the white-robed child lies—the feeling is not as if holy truths were travestied and parodied, but rather as if, under strange forms and by a strange providence, there—away down in the dark, vile places of the earth—the grand truths of immortality and of religion were uttered to ears unaccustomed.

  Wherever, throughout, the characters are changed, it all tends to the great end of the book. "Miss Phely" is even more snappish, and more unreasonable against "niggers" than in the original; and the contrast of Southern kindness and familiarity with them, with the Northern prejudice, is well drawn. The effect of the representation is to elevate the black; and we are very much mistaken, from the tone on this occasion, if the United States' officers ever get much assistance, in chasing runaways, from the "Bowery Boys."

  We came expecting the usual "blood and murder" acting of the National, and curious to see how such a piece would be managed there, and how the "Boys" would receive it. Most of the pit-audience had, probably, never seen the book, or any good book. They could not be got to listen to a sermon. They would not be moved by it if they did. These low theatres are usually the places where coarseness and lewdness are bred, and where the better thoughts are only expressed to be parodied. It seemed strange that, in such a place, the piety and talent of a New England woman should be uttering grand religious sentiments and the truest feelings of humanity, in tones which could not but be heard, to the very dregs of the outcasts of our City. Some writer has said that "to arouse one true feeling of generosity and pity is better for man's soul than to study a whole system of moral philosophy."

  In that view, perhaps, no better sermon was ever preached to the boys of the Bowery, than this setting of "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

H.