When Madame Saqui's performance grew stale, other wonders succeeded; horses, harlequinades, and mummery of all kinds; until another dramatic prodigy was brought forward to play the very game for which I had been intended. I called upon the kept author for an explanation, but he was deeply engaged in writing a melo-drame or a pantomime, and was extremely testy on being interrupted in his studies. How ever, as the theatre was in some measure pledged to provide for me, the manager acted, according to the usual phrase, "like a man of honour," and I received an appointment in the corps. It had been a turn of a die whether I should be Alexander the Great, or Alexander the coppersmith-the latter carried it. I could not be put at the head of the drama, so I was put at the tail of it. In other words, I was enrolled among the number of what are called useful men; those who enact soldiers, senators, and Banquo's shadowy line. I was perfectly satisfied with my lot; for I have always been a bit of a philosopher. If my situation was not splendid, it at least was secure; and in fact I have seen half a dozen prodigies appear, dazzle, burst like bubbles and pass away, and yet here I am, snug, unenvied and unmolested at the foot of the profession. No, no, you may smile; but let me tell you, we "useful men" are the only comfortable actors on the stage. We are safe from hisses, and below the hope of applause. We fear not the success of riyals, nor dread the critic's pen. So long as we get the words of our parts, and they are not often many, it is all we care for. We have our own merriment, our own friends, and our own admirers for every actor has his friends and admirers, from the highest to the lowest. The first-rate actor dines with the noble amateur, and entertains a fashionable table with scraps and songs and theatrical slip-slop. The second-rate actors have their second-rate friends and admirers, with whom they likewise spout tragedy and talk slip-slop-and so down even to us; who have our friends and admirers among spruce clerks and aspiring apprentices-who treat us to a dinner now and then, and enjoy at tenth band the same scraps and songs and slipslop that have been served up by our more fortunate brethren at the tables of the great. 1 now, for ths first time in my theatrical life, experience what true pleasure is. I have known enough of notoriety to pity the poor devils who are called favourites of the public. I would rather be a kitten in the arms of a spoiled child, to be one moment patted and pampered, and the next moment thumped over the head with the spoon. I smile to see our leading actors fretting themselves with envy and jealousy about a trumpery renown, questionable in its quality, and uncertain in its duration. I laugh, too, though of course in my sleeve, at the bustle and importance, and trouble and perplexities of our managerwho is harrassing himself to death in the hopeless effort to please every body. I have found among my fellow subalterns, two or three quondam managers, who, like myself, have wielded the sceptres of country theatres, and we have many a sly joke together, at the expence of the manager and the public.-Sometimes, too, we meet like deposed and exiled kings, talk over the events of our respective reigns, moralize over a tankard of ale, and laugh at the humbug of the great and little world, which, I take it, is ́ the essense of practical philosophy. Driginal Poetry. SKETCHES FROM NATURE. How long that lonely arch has borne The tempest's rage, the wintry storm! A monument of splendour gone, That ruined arch remains alone. No part is left of that proud pile, No fretted roof, no lengthened aisle ; No trace, save that lone arch appears, To tell a tale of lengthened years! All, all is changed-no matin bell Now echoes through the woody dell; No evening hymn of praise is heard, No beads are told, no pray'r preferred. Once trod that cloister walk, but now→→ Those who had paid the holy vow, Far different footsteps echo there, Far different objects claim their care. The cloistered monk, the baron proud, Beneath the stroke of Time have bowed: Yet still that Gothic arch remains, A vestige of their old domains. And when my feeble frame is laid Beneath the grave's eternal shade, That ruined arch, so fair and lone, Will tell the tale of ages gone. -00 M Look at that star, that, rising bright, And mingle, in that calm retreat. M-. The Cuts by the celebrated Bewick. CURIOUS COURTSHIP-A young gentleman and lady happened to be in the same pew in a free church in America. During the course of the Sermon, the youth read something in the eyes of the fair, which made a deeper impression on his mind than the pious lecture of the Preacher. As love, although blind, is never at a loss for expedients, he presented the maiden, whose charms had attracted his notice, with the following passage, being the 5th verse of the Second Epistle of John: "Now I beseech thee, Lady, not as though I wrote a new commandinent unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another." After reading this passage, the lady, in reply, promptly referred her suitor to another passage, in the Old Testament -namely, the 16th verse of the 1st chapter of Ruth: "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee, for whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God shall be my God." DEATH here adds to his usual employment that of avenger of oppressed vassals. He is throwing with violence at the head of this Lord, his coat of arms, the dear object of his pride, under the weight of which he is ready to make him fall. He appears trampling under foot a flail, to mark his inhumanity to labourers, a class of society so necessary and respectable. On the ground also are to be seen the remains of the helmet which formed the crest of his arms, with the other ornaments that decorated them. THE JEW'S HARP. MEN of genius are fond of paradoxes. Rousseau abounds with them, and a celebrated German writer, a man of firstrate abilities and refined taste, has not hesitated gravely to declare it as his opinion, that the Jews' Harp is capable of being carried to a high degree of perfection, and of forming a great addition to the modern orchestra. He expects yet to see the day, when sonatas and variations may be produced upon it, and considers it as possessing the most delicate tones in the world. He thus concludes: "Perhaps some genius may arise, who may be able to modify the melody of this instrument, and give it laws at present unknown. Certain it is, that there are some advantages which, even now, it possesses over all other instruments, and on none can that modification of sound, called the stuccato, be more delicately given, or brought more immediately under the dominion of the feelings." The Cuts by the celebrated Bewick. on No. XIII.-THE ABBE. His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden by the cords of his sins.usano 20an ob von PROV. iv. 22. DEATH, not contented with stripping this fat Prelate of his crosier, which he is carrying in triumph on his shoulder, and his mitre, with which he is dressing himself, is dragging him away without pity. Hle raises his breviary with one hand, and with the other is making some vain efforts to push him off. No. XIV. THE ABBESS. Wherefore I praised the dead, which are already dead, more than the living, which are yet alive. ECCLES. iv. 2. DEATH ludicrously hooded with several flowing plumes, and robed in a kind of gown, carries out of her convent an Abbess, whom he is dragging with all his might by her scapulary. The reverend Mother with regret is leaving life and the honours she enjoys; and expresses, by the alteration of her features and by her cries, the fright that Death has produced in her soul. Behind her, under the gate of the convent, appears a young. Nun, strangely agitated with terror and grief. A POET IN A DILEMMA. The bottom would be hard. "So ride along, you'll find it true;" Away the poet sped. But at the bottom of the hill, Into the mire he sank.; Lay kicking, sprawling, lower still, ام Why, rogne," exclaimed the struggling bard (Still sinking farther down), "How could you call the bottom hard?" "Nay, patience;" said the clown," "The bottom's hard, I still aver; "And truth alone 1 say; But to the bottom, worthy sir, "You are not yet half way.' 1 LEONORA; A SKETCH. Poor Alonzó! he was the best friend that ever drank Xeres: he picked me out of the Gandalquiver, when I deemed I had said my last prayer. It was a very conciliating introduction. I never in my life made a friend of a man to whom I was introduced in a formal kind of way, with hows from both parties, and cordiality from neither. I love something more stirring, more animated; the river of life is at best but a quiet stupid stream, and I want an Occasional pebble to ruffle its surface withal. The most agreeable intro ductions that ever fell to my lot were these my introduction to Pendragon, who was overturned with me in the York Mail; my introduction to Eliza, who contrived to faint in my arins on board the Albion Packet ;—and my introduction to Alonzo, who picked me out of the Gaudalquiver. I was strolling beside it on a fine moonlight night, after a brilliant and fatiguing party, at which the lady Isidora had made ten conquests, and Don Pedro had told twenty stories: I was tired to death of dancing and iced waters, glaring lights and lemonade; and as I looked on the sleepy wave, and the dark trees, and the cloudless sky, I felt that I could wander there for ever, and dream of poetry, and-two or three friends. The sound of a guitar and a sweet voice waked me; I do not know why I always associate the ideas of pleasant tones and bright eyes together; but I cannot help it, and of course I was very anxious to see the musician of the Gau dalquiver. I clambered, by the aid of cracked stones, and bushes which hung to them, to the summit of a low wall; and looking down perceived a cavalier sitting with a lady under a grove of sycamores. The cavalier seemed to have seen hardly seventeen winters; he was slender and tall, with a ruddy complexion, black hair, and a quick merry eye. The lady appeared full five years older; her eyes were as quick, and her ringlets as black, and her complexion as warm, but more delicate: they were evidently brother and sister; but that was a matter of indifference to me. I heard a Spanish song upon the fall of the Abencerrage, and another upon the exploits of the Cid: then the lady began an Italian ditty, but she had not accomplished the first stanza, when a decayed stone gave way, and carried me through all the intricacies of bush and bramble into the cold bed of the river. I could not swim a stroke. I remember nothing more until the minute when I opened my eyes, and found myself in a pretty summer house, very wet and very cold, with Alonzo and his sister leaning over me. "For the love of heaven," were the first words I heard, “run, Alonzo, to call the servants.” "I wait," said Alonzo, "to hear him speak. If he be a Frenchman, he goes to the bottom again." The fates be thanked that I was born in Derbyshire, and called Sir Harry my father; if I had bathed in the Seine instead of the Derwent, I had rued my parentage bitterly. Alonzo detested the French. From that time we were always together. They were orphans, and had scarcely a relation in the world except an aunt, who had gone to the cloister, and an uncle who had crossed the sca, and a rich cousin who had betaken himself St. Jerome knew whither; but Alonzo, who had a much nearer concern in the matter, seemed to know little enough about it. They had travelled much, and Leonora was mistress apparently of the literature of all Europe; yet they went rarely into company, for they doted upon one another with a love so perfect and so engrossing, that you might have fancied them, as they fancied themselves, alone in the world, with no toil and no pleasure, but solitary walks, and songs of tenderness, and gazings upon one another's eyes. If ever perfection existed in woman, it existed here. I do not know why I did not fall in love with Leonora; but to be sure, I was in love with five or six at the time. A few months flew delightfully away. Leonora taught me Spanish, and Alonzo taught me to swim. Every morning was occupied with romantic excursions by water or by land, and every evening was beguiled with literary conversation or music from the loveliest voice and the most eloquent strings that ever I had the fortune to listen to. And when we parted, we parted with warm hearts, and pleasant anticipations, and affectionate tears. In two brief years those hearts were separated, and those anticipations were blighted for ever; and those tears were exchanged for tears of bitterness and mourning. She The troubles of Spain commenced; and my poor Alonzo joined the Patriots, and fell in his first campaign. Leonora had been-not a heroine, for I hate heroines,-but a noble woman. herself had decorated the young victim whom she sacrificed to her country's good; she had embroidered the lace on his uniform with her own hand; she had given him the scarf which was found turned round his arm on the field; and she had smiled mournfully as she bade him wear it till some one more beautiful or more beloved had chosen him for her knight, And when he had girded on his father's sword, and lingered with his hand upon his courser's mane, she had said farewell,' in a firm voice, and wept while she said it. It was on a journey to Scotland that I passed through the small village in which the Spanish lady had shrouded her fading beauty and her breaking heart. I sent up my name to her, and was admitted into her little drawing-room immediately. Oh how altered she seemed that day, All the colour had disappeared from her cheek, and all the freshness from her lip; she had still the white hand and arm, which I had seen running so lightly over the strings of her theorbo, but they were wasted terribly away; and though her long dark locks were braided as carefully as they had been in happier days, they did not communicate the idea of brightness and brilliancy which they had been wont to scatter over her countenance. She endeavoured to rise from the sofa as I entered; but the effort was too great for her, and she sat down without speaking She was evidently dying; and the contrast between the parting and the meeting, and the vague vision of the past, and the melancholy reality of the present, struck me so forcibly and so sadly, that I stayed with my hand on the door and burst. into tears. "We are not to weep thus," she said, "he fell Kike a true Spaniard, and I only regret that I was not born a man, that I might have put my rifle to my shoulder, and died with my hand in his. Pray sit down; it is a long time since I have seen any friend who can talk to me of the old days." I suggested that she ought to endeavour to think less of the losses she had endured, and to dwelt more cheerfully on the tranquillity which might yet be in store for her. "I should despise you now," she answered, "if I could think this advice came from your heart. What you would have me forget him, whose life was my dearest pleasure, and whose death is my greatest pride. Look at this ring," and she took off a small gold one, and made me remark its motto, fiel a la muerte; "he would not have bade me wear this in remembrance of him, if he had not known that he was doomed to perish, if he had not known too that I should be happy afterwards in thinking and dreaming of him." Then she began to recal minutely every scene and circumstance of our intimacy; inquiring about every study or amusement we had meditated or enjoyed together, whether I had bet tered my flute-playing-whether I had studied landscape,-whether I had finished Calderon. She wearied herself with talking; and then leaning her head on the cushions, desired me to take up a book from the table and read to her, that she might hear whether my pronuncia. tion was improved, I took up the first that presented itself; it was only a manuscript book, containing many scraps and fragments from different authors in her brother's hand writing. I laid it down again, and took up the next; it was a Dante, which I had given her, I opened it at randon and began to read the story of Francesca, When I came to the celebrated lines, "Nessum maggior dolore Che ricordaris del tempo felice "I do not believe a word of it," she said, "I would not lose my recollection for all Mexico." I took leave of her soon: for I saw her. When I had parted from her before, that my presence agitated and wearied she had given me a miniature of herself, which she had painted in all the glow of which then so well became her. Now health and spirits, and ardent affections, she gave me another, which had been her I do not know why I turn from the first task or pleasure in sickness and solitude. with its fine hues and sparkling lustre, to gaze upon the paleness and languor of the other, with a deeper feeling of melancholy delight. "When I returned from Scotland after the lapse of two months, Leonora was dead. I found the sexton of the village, and desired him to point out to me the There was a spot where she rested small marble slab over her remains, with the brief inscription "Leonora-Addio!” I stood for a few minutes there, and began to moralize and murmur. "It seems only yesterday," I said, "that she was moving and breathing before me, with all the buoyancy and beauty of her blameless form, and her stainless spirit; and now she lies in her purity and her loveliness." "She lies in a pretty grave," said the old sexton, looking with apparent satis faction on his handiwork. "She does, indeed, good Nicholas; and her loveliness is but little to the purpose!" I. M. |