might effect nausea with some, a second visit of the holy Sovereigns of Europe-but still I think it might be worth while to offer a reward for some exotic novelty-and I take great discredit to myself, that before the departure of our enterprizing countrymen on the North Pole expedition, I did not suggest to the ladies patronesses the propriety of adding to the reward offered by government, a bonus for the discovery of an icelandic or esquimaux dance. An Indian dance is certainly tasteful and picturesque, although somewhat rude, and I am sure an esquimaux set of figures could not be so absurd and spiritless as "the lancers," which have been attempted to be pushed up to us, by a man whom I understand to be a lawyer. If he succeed no better in a suit at law than he has done in his manœuvres of "the lancers," I should fear little to be told of "his action of battery." His bill would certainly be ignored. But Almack's is still of superior enjoyment, it is the finest and most elegant assembly (confining the term to its English acceptation) in Europe. I have not been at Vienna or Petersburgh, but I have heard the Countess Lieven, and the Princess Esterhazy declare it to be more finished and entire than those of their respective capitals, and I

am sure there is none such at Paris, or in Italy. Berlin, the little courts of Germany, and, lastly, that of the Netherlands, are totally out of the question; nothing can be more heavy or fade. We meet no where so numerously as at these assemblies, and they are a very agreeable two hours? amusement. It is purely aristocratic, which, in this instance, is not a fault. There is an usefulness arising out of Almack's, namely, charity. Several charity balls are given, to which are admitted the second order of fashion, and which being fancy dress ones, have three advantages-they relieve the distressed (an officer's widow, or some such deserving object), encourage trade, and disguise the want of finish which might here and there be apparent. I mean no disrespect to this class; nothing can be more respectable than the whole of its members, but want of collision with high breeding, or want of tact, sometimes would expose the rust which an assumed character covers. I cannot now dilate further upon the subject, therefore adieu.

Yours,

A ROUÉ.

P. S. I must take a future oppor→ tunity of noticing Mr. Webb's conversazione; it is a national benefit to possess a man of such taste, spirit, and liberality.

AT Naples they have a large theatre, which is called 'San Carlo,' and in this place regular operas are exhibited. In the streets the people have amusements of a different order, and of these Punch is the most popular and ancient. In London we adopt a more economical plan: for we have a large theatre called Covent Garden, and another called Drury Lane, in which tragedy, come dy, opera, and farce, are jumbled together, with matters much upon a level with Punch and his associ

ates.

We do not so much object to the managers of theatres when they curtail or alter a standard drama, for the sake of introducing a little music of their composer, or a little foolery

of their own; they would not, we suspect, put themselves to this trouble, if the public would come in sufficient numbers to see the dramas as they were originally written: but we do object to see a man hung up by the heels, traversing the proscenium of the theatre with his head downwards, alarming the women, and disgusting the men. Taste must indeed be at a sad ebb, when it can reconcile itself to this: and we are persuaded that at this ebb, the taste of the country has not yet arrived.

The Sieur Davoust,' (is he related to the Marshal Prince of Eckmuhl?) is a fair candidate for renown in his way; and we should be glad to meet with him at Smithfield on the third of September, or at

Peckham, or Camberwell, or Croydon, during the festivities which are annually committed at those respective and respectable villages. He would make a figure there, chained as it were to the dome of the place, writhing about like a serpent, or fixed, like the Prometheus of Michael Angelo, who, when the vulture is making his angry repast, looks sternly and calmly upon it, although cast with his head downwards, and fettered like a felon upon the ridge of the Indian Caucasus. The Sieur Davoust contemplates the pit and the admiring boxes with a similar complacency: he puts his foot to his mouth, he waves a flag, he drinks wine as unconcernedly as though he were still on the earth, banquetting like one of the vulgar. We despair of doing justice to his marche aerienne' without the assistance of a wood-cut, or some of our old friend, Mr. Janus Weathercock's, pictorial faculty. . Besides the Sieur, there have appeared two other exhibitors: strange and almost deformed, but withal possessing prodigious muscular power; and the other chiselled by nature into proportions, which might have served the Greek statuaries, when they fashioned their divine marbles for all-coming time. They have been, and passed away, like other great spirits; and the theatre is once more reduced to the common attraction of dialogue.

COVENT-GARDEN.

one

Hallande) pour forth. The voice of the one falling soft as dew, and of a power and compass almost unparalleled in the annals of song; and the other clear, and ravishing, and musical, as is the lute of Apollo. Fit companions are they for the great Prospero, who has the elements at his beck, and Ariel the most delicate of spirits, for his slave. Then there is the princely Ferdinand, a willing servant, and subjected by love as utterly as was Hercules of old at the Court of the Lydian Queen ; and Caliban, poetic monster, who is in the woods, and of the woods a part, a thing made up of earth, and rugged as the rock, a little touched with humanity, and with a capacity for art equal to that of the renowned Mr. Samson Rawbold, whose moonlight pastimes every reader of the Iron Chest, and every admirer of Kean's Sir Edward Mortimer, will gratefully remember.

Prospero is the hero of the Tempest. He "walks gowned," with an air and consciousness of power, to which even the Doctors of Civil Law, at either of our learned Univer sities, may not hope to approximate; he is seen swaying the thunder, and the storm, and bidding the fiery lightning halt in its course; he pours the oil of his words upon the waves, and they are still; yet he has some of the alloy of human nature still, some of the yearnings of the common man, and some of the irritability of absolute power: he is still Duke of Milan in his heart, and father of the fair Miranda,-though Caliban is at his footstool, and the creatures of the air are obedient to his voice.

Macready, who adds a good deal of the imaginative, in acting, to those natural touches which have so much distinguished him, is the worthy representative of the renowned magician. Very tender was his recital of his past life to his wondering child: there are few things, even in Shakspeare, which are more affecting than part of the story which Prospero tells :

Twelve years since, Miranda, twelve years since,

Thy father was the Duke of Milan, and
A Prince of power.

This repetition, "Twelve years since, Miranda, twelve years since," sounds like a sigh to departed great

of the West Riding," without any alteration. There is Sir Francis Wronghead, knight (made a knight by mistake, perhaps, as some low ambitious person was the other day, if we are to believe the Gazette), and Lady Wronghead, worthy of her name; Squire Richard, adapted for squandering money instead of earning it, a model for squires (Mr. Antony Lumpkin is his copy), potent in parish disputes, and arbitrator of alehouse concerns; Miss Jenny, who has nothing in her fancy but frippery, and the purest folly,—a shred of finery, who is swayed about at the will of an ingenious gentleman of the town, till she has nothing left but her sullenness to keep alive her distinctions; and, lastly, Mr. John Moody, an unwilling participator in the London expedition, and scarcely breathing in an element, which every word and look denote to be foreign to his nature, and abhorrent to his taste. Why were not these good folks put in a picture, and hung up by the side of the Flamborough family? It is not too late even now. Fawcett is Sir Francis, and Mrs. Davenport my lady; Miss Foote is Miss Jenny, and Mr. Liston is the Squire; Emery follows, as John Moody. They all did their parts well, and deserve the immortality which we suggest should be given to them by some of our modern pain

ters.

With regard to Lord and Lady Townly (acted by Mr. Charles Kemble and Miss Dance), we have to crave the reader's attention to a few words. His Lordship is very moral and very amiable, no doubt; and it is well, and for the benefit of all husbands, that he should acquit himself as he does; though we think that he is too elaborately severe at last, and he menaces and relents somewhat too quickly, to answer our notions, either of firmness of purpose, or just resentment. He is set up as a model for husbands; yet when his wife is sinking in the deepest remorse before him, and he has actually abandoned her for ever, he threatens her with a deprivation of the income, which he not very bountifully bestows, in case she shall commit certain possible indiscretions. This does not accord with his exclamations of regret in the same scene,

nor with the affliction which (on the stage at least) he manifests for her loss. Mr. Charles Kemble played Lord Townly excellently well; although we do not quite like the scene to which we have alluded. Lord Townly would scarcely be moved to tears, we think, when he was sitting self-constituted judge on the errors of his wife. Mr. Kemble, however, undoubtedly threw into the character much of what was true and delightful,-the air of the man of sense, the scholar, and the gentleman, and the dignity and grace of nobility sat well upon him. Miss Dance looked very handsome as Lady Townly: she was well received, and certainly frequently merited the applause which was given to her; but she wants strength and ease. We have seen her once more in Belvidera, and our opinion remains as it was before. The same want of power pervades her comedy and tragedy. It is not so much the want of power in voice and gesture, as that she herself seems to have no sway over the words or ideas of the author. In her performance of Belvidera, she is sometimes so entirely borne down by the stream of the language, that she looks at the end of her speech helpless, and unable to do any thing further. She should meet it boldly, in order to conquer. The words seemed to escape from Mrs. Siddons; but Miss Dance seems to escape from the words, and at every successive speech to start up again with renewed strength, which is again exerted for the purpose of her sinking a second time. There seemed to be a race between effort and exhaustion, and we were perpetually alarmed lest the latter should prevail. We would not be understood to say that an actress should not give herself up to the poetry which she recites: on the contrary, unless she does this in parts of emotion, she cannot, we think, ever greatly excel. Feeling is as necessary as power and good sense. Now Mrs. Siddons appeared to us to possess all these: she affected us more than Miss Dance does, yet we were never under any apprehension that she would sink down before the end of the play. There was always a power visible in her, subdued of course by passion, but at the same time heightening the pas

sion itself, giving a majesty to grief, and to love a luxury, which, had she fainted on her words, or sighed them inaudibly to the winds, would have had but little effect in a theatre. Miss Dance's Lady Townly, then, was deficient somewhat in skill and effect; but it was engaging in the tender parts; and the lassitude of her nature did her occasionally much service in that portrait of the refined woman of fashion. A display of too much physical strength would make Lady Townly coarse, and too little (in the actress) would render her of course ineffective. Miss Dance manages sorrow, and expressions of gentle love, better than any thing else; and we would recommend her strongly to adhere, as much as she can, to parts where these emotions are most prominent. It will mature her talent, and do more for her fame than will any adventuring into a wider range of character.

Romeo and Juliet.-The same lady has also played Juliet: we have nothing further to say regarding her, except, that parts of the character were very agreeably given; though we recognized more than once the gestures, and even tones, of a lady, who was, in our earlier days, a star of attraction to us, and who still (perhaps we may join Miss Kelly with her, in much of what we say) gives us a better idea of comic acting than any thing which we can now discern in the pretty females of this "degenerate day." We remember when she (Mrs. Charles Kemble) used to play Albinia in "The Will," and such things, when she sang, and danced, and laughed, and talked, till the spirit of mirth awoke within us; and there was a deep feeling in her softened tones, which does not usually accommodate itself to comedy, or harmonize very readily with the airier sounds which flow from the followers of the gay Thalia. We wish that she could make Miss, Dance (if she has any influence over her) play as well as she was wont to do. We have but seldom seen her lately, and cannot, therefore, tell whether her comic faculty be im paired or not. We should think (and hope) not. It is not many years since it was in bright perfecVOL. III.

tion; and an eclipse of so gay a spirit is not surely the affair of a moment,—nor of a year.

She Stoops to Conquer (Goldsmith's comedy) has been got up for the benefit and amusement of his Majesty. He seemed to take a lively interest in the proceedings of the house of Hardcastle, and of Mrs. Hardcastle's worthy first-born, Mr. Anthony Lumpkin. It is worth while for an amateur of the ludicrous to go to Covent-garden to see Liston's fruitless and laborious endeavours to unravel the mystery of a letter. The direction is plain ground, and he does not stumble, and he achieves a victory over the commencing words, "Dear Squire,': without much effort; but the rest is all obscurity and perplexity. He looks and looks again; he takes the letter nearer to the light; he spells and re-spells; he is audacious and diffident in vain. The hieroglyphics stare him insultingly in the, face, and he rubs the letter upon his leather breeches as a last resort, and in the desperate hope that the syllables will array themselves, in more lucid order, or accommodate themselves to the scope of his literary attainments. Charles Kemble always plays young Marlow well, and Fawcett is very good in Hardcastle.

DRURY LANE.

Marino Faliero. We discussed Lord Byron's tragedy so much at length in our last number, that we shall forbear troubling our readers. this month with further criticism upon it. We may remark, however, that it failed in being eminently successful. This was not the fault of the author, who seems purposely. to have dilated his dialogue, and lengthened his speeches, in order, if possible, to save it from the stage. Mr. Elliston, however, "would not be denied." He brought forward the play in defiance of the wishes of the author and of the public, and in the face of an Injunction; and his reward has been very thin houses. For this we are not, we confess, sorry; nor shall we regret if the question-whether the managers of theatres may, without any remune ration, avail themselves of a poet's 3 D