which he has accustomed himself through life. This position holds good, either as to nations or as to individuals; and may be better relied on than the dogmata of a hundred Lavaters or a thousand Spurzheims. Look abroad at the nations of the earth, and

see.

The German! What is his characteristic? Heavy, very heavy, because he drinketh beer, and gulpeth down the lees of a bottle of port rather than waste the latter end of his beverage; besides which, the port that is sold in the land savoureth to a frightful degree of sloe-juice and molass. The Frenchman! What is his characteristic!- Volatile, airy, and effervescent! Look in his bottle, and you'll know the why :he lusteth after champagne-he bibbeth thin potations of claret and sauterne: and if so, where, in the name of all the Spirits of Wine at once, is he to get his stamina and muscle? The Turk! What is his characteristic? Muddle-headed, inert, and one that moves at the rate of a snail's mile in a day. Again I say, examine his drink: it consisteth of sherbet poured upon a layer of laudanum-goat's milk thickened with opium: then where, I pray, the wonder? Need I state more exemplars? If you would know why the Spaniard is more solid than the Italian, look at the qualities of their respective wines. If you would learn why the Sicilian won't fight, and the Irishman will, consider the nature of their beverage. Apropos of the Irishman :—why is it that he is the admiration of the women -the wonder of the world—the paragon of the creation? Because he, and he alone, has learned the just admixture of all liquors: he steadies himself with port,-he refines himself with Madeira,―he enlivens himself with champagne,—and finally rectifies the whole with that superhuman invention which the vulgar call whiskey, but the true master of the taste and palate "the nectar of the Gods."

But, as I said before, this rule is not confined to nations only: it is equally applicable to individuals: and a circumstance which has often recurred to my mind, when thinking on this point, will well enough serve to illustrate this part of my subject. In the first place, I must begin with a confession,—and a very disagreeable one to the author of a theory-especially so admirable a one as that which these pages are delineating. However, magis amica veritas, &c., and here it is! This valuable theory is not altogether my own, seeing that it is in part

borrowed from an elderly gentleman with whom I was acquainted in my young days, and who, should I mention his name, would be instantly recognised by all the savans of every country as an eminent benefactor of the human race. But to the illustration. This elderly gentleman was so in love with the theory I have laid down, that he determined to put it in practice on his three sons; and with this view he always insisted on John drinking nothing but port, Ned Madeira, and Stephen champagne, each of them under divers pains and penalties never to taste any other wine but that set down for them: nay, so far did he carry his enthusiasm for the system, that in his will he apportioned his ample fortune equally amongst the three-but on the same condition, the property of either to be forfeited on its once being proved that the delinquent had infringed the law of champagne, port, or Madeira, as it might happen. This strange dictation of the old gentleman occasioned much talk at college when I was there, that being the period when his three sons were also there, going through their university training. This circumstance, however, like many others of early life, had been nearly forgotten by me, till about forty years afterwards it was my chance to travel in the mail from London to Holyhead with a gentleman, who in the course of conversation turned out to be no other than Ned

, or, as he then re-introduced himself to me, Major-General Edward The recognition that mutually took place between us, naturally led us to talk of olden times; and olden times brought his father and brothers on the tapis.

"Ah!” cried he, his eyes glistening, and his nose shining fiery red through the misty November morning in which we were travelling-“ Ah, old dad was right enough in his theory after all. You remember the conditions? Jack for port, -Stevy for champagne,--and I for Madeira! Poor fellows, they are both dead; and rely on this, it was the wine they drank that did it. But I'll give you a sketch of our lives, and then you can draw your own conclusions. Jack, after sundry chances, took to the mercantile; though both Stevy and myself remonstrated fiercely against it, for we did not like the thought of the blood of degenerating at that rate: but the port he had drunk had made Jack obstinate, or stupid, or both; so a merchant he would be. And what do you think the end of it was? He

-SO

lost all his money-was gazetted secundum artem-and next night he walked into the Fleet river at Bagnigge Wells, and was found there dead in the morning :-the coroner's jury were very lenient; they returned a verdict Found suffocated;' something was spared the blood of the You will easily guess that Stevy, with nothing but champagne in his veins, never dreamt of the counter or the counting-house; but that infernal frisky French tipple popped him into another sort of scrape: he took to himself a wife, but was too frisky to live with her beyond a couple of monthsso then he ran away; but again the champagne let him in for it,-for, not content with running away himself, he ran away with another man's wife,-and the end of it was, that having run away himself, and run away with her, the husband ran after him, and ran poor Stevy through in the Bois de Boulogne. Thus, my friend, you see the fatal extremities of port and champagne: now, here am I, who have stuck most religiously to Madeira according to the old man's will; sixty-five shall I be next birthday, and Madeira my only physic through life; I have been in the West Indies-I have been in the East Indies-I have been in the Peninsula—I have had eight horses shot under me; I began as an ensign-never once purchased after my first commissionand here I am, hale, hearty, and a MajorGeneral at your service. After this, judge for yourself whether what a man drinks is not the real criterion of his rise and fall."

The account that was thus given me by my old friend, the Major-General, was a strange confirmation of a train of thoughts in which I had frequently indulged; and though I

am not prepared to say that Madeira is the way in which you should train up a child, I strongly counsel every good father of a family, at all events, to avoid overloading his offspring with either port or champagne. What the right succedaneum may be, is another question. Byron inspired himself with gin and water-Dr. Johnson vibrated in his peregrination through life, between port wine and tea-and I have a friend who, when he undertakes to read one of Joseph Hume's speeches, or a page of Young's Night Thoughts, sends for a pot of porter to bring himself into a proper condition for the effort. I'll look some day, and see what Lewis Cornaro says upon the subject.

In the meanwhile, as I have made one confession, I will conclude this treatise on Spirits of Wine by making another—to the effect, that even good things may be abused; and I have no doubt that the Spirits of Wine may be so offended as to throw aside their fine and Ariel shape, and take on them the brute and disgusting form of oppressive Caliban: in this respect they resemble the fairies, to whom they are akin :— -behave genteelly to them, and they have for you a Titania tenderness of handling; but, take advantage of their good-nature by abuse, and they grapple you with all the pinching and mischief of a Puck. None knew this better than the joy-hearted Greeks, whose reverence for the Spirits of Wine I have already recorded; for while their hourswhether of pleasure, of seriousness, or of solemnity-had space enough for honour to the cup, the memory of the Spartan Helots will ever stand a monument of their knowledge, that Over-use is Abuse.

who, it seems, attracted too much attention from his comedies, whereupon he, the said Terence, found that he had stumbled upon evil days; Ben Jonson was not a whit less indignant with his English audiences, who, he protested had no relish for anything but noise and battles; while even the gentle Shakspeare (query gentle ?) talks of their passion for inexplicable dumb show; lately our dear grandfathers, with much more justice on their side, thought that comedy was truly defunct, when for years they were nightly dosed with O'Keefe, Colman, and

Reynolds; they did indeed tolerate this blessed triad, but like ancient Pistol, though compelled to eat their leek, they grumbled over it most prodigiously. Thus then it should seem the drama is, and always has been, in a dying state, and the only wonder is that by this time it is not extinct altogether.

Leaving the worshippers of past times to get out of this dilemma as best they may, we shall endeavour to render the subject as plain to our readers as we fancy,-God bless the mark!-it has long been to ourselves. To do this effectually, we must imitate the example of my Uncle Toby, who could only discover the right course of a cannon ball by first demonstrating the thousand and one ways which it did not take.

As regards the elder dramatists, it is not a little curious that, while we profess so much admiration for them, so few of their numerous works are able to keep their place upon the modern stage. We have twelve volumes of Beaumont and Fletcher -nine of Ben Jonson-as many of Shirley --four of Massinger-two of Ford, of Marlow, and of Webster—and of Decker, Peel, and others, in about the same proportion; yet, of all these plays, not more than five at the most are found acceptable to a modern audience. Every attempt to revive any of the others has either failed altogether, or been so coldly received by the public, as to be equivalent to a failure. Is this the fault of large theatres ? Not so; for at all events the Haymarket is small enough for any useful purpose. Is it the fault of the actors? Why we have men and women upon the stage by scores, who are blazoned by the critics, and idolized by the public. Is it the fault of that same public? The laudatores temporis actithe praisers of the past, will no doubt be ready enough to adopt this solution of the doubt, but it is not the less a most egregious fallacy. The truth is, that those who make this outcry for the ancient drama, know nothing at all about the matter, or else, with the usual jealousy of little minds, they reserve all their praises for the dead, lest living talent should throw a shadow over their own dwarfishness. As to the works in question, though they abound in humour, pathos, and vigour, they are yet exceedingly imperfect as works of art; not only are their plots improbable and defective, but most of the scenes are such as it is utterly impossible to realise. Take, for

instance, by way of illustration, the wild dance of maniacs in "The Duchess of Malfy;" the object is to drive the Duchess mad, and Webster has exhausted all the powers of his genius in giving effect to this terrible conception. With the reader he has fully succeeded, but how is such a scene to be realised?-the thing is utterly impossible. Now all this was of no consequence in the olden time, when, as we have a thousand proofs, it was never attempted to act plays in the modern sense of the word acting; in those days there was no scenery, no correctness of costume, no attempts whatever at realization, as a careful reader must be convinced from every page of our ancient dramatists. Their acting was nothing more than recitation, in which the person speaking made no effort to identify himself with the character which he was supposed to represent. Hence arose the total abandonment, at pleasure, of all the unities; for to what end was the observance of them, more than in any novel? where a lapse of twenty years may be supposed, without at all affecting probability to the reader. The same cause opened to them a wide field of subjects, and indeed it might be said to exclude nothing; not attempting any illusion, they could venture upon scenes and situations which the writer of the present day does not dare to touch upon, simply because he must bring forward no more than can be realised to the eyes and understandings of the audience. This argument is in no case so intelligible as by referring to the whole machinery of ghosts and witches. What can be more beautiful (we had almost said, divine) than Hamlet's ghost in the perusal ?—yet, to speak of it in the mildest terms, nothing can be more dull and ineffective than this same ghost upon the modern stage, where the appeal is made to the eyes, and not to the imagination. The witches again, in Macbeth: we read them with unmingled admiration, but will any man of common understanding say that he sees them in representation with a similar feeling? Are they not rendered tolerable to us by the exquisite music of Locke, that formed no part of the author's original design, but was added long after his death by another hand, and at a time when the introduction of scenery had made illusion requisite ?

We have dwelt upon this point, to put an end, if possible, to that eternal croaking about the past which damps everything like enthusiasm in modern authors, and

which, by setting up one fixed, immutable model, tends to put down all originality. In every other branch of literature, the age has been allowed to give its own form and pressure to its productions. The poetry of Scott and Byron, the splendid Waverley romances, the novels of Hook, the periodical writings of Wilson and Maginn—all are direct emanations of the age in which the writers live; but the drama, when it has fallen into better hands, has only been an imitation of the past, for to that model it was as strictly limited and confined as ever French tragedy was by the example of their miscalled classic poets. And what was the consequence ?-though the critics praised, and the public re-echoed their praises, yet the theatrical treasuries remained empty : all admired, and justly admired such productions, for they were the work of talent; but the result was not in harmony with the feelings of the age, and, naturally enough, few went to see them. Thus foiled and defeated, the mob-eyed managers fell back upon a set of wretched translators from the French, and scribes yet worse than translators; but still, to their great surprise, their houses remained empty, while the minor theatres, with the same class of productions, were crammed to overflowing. Even this failed to open their eyes, though to a fact so plain that nothing short of mental blindness could have overlooked it. Bunn went blundering on in the same course, and even Charles Kemble did little better. Now could anything be plainer than that the pieces they played, and the manner in which they played them, had driven away the more educated part of the public, while their high prices were equally effective in closing their doors against the multitude? We are far from supposing that Mr. Osbaldiston saw a jot further than his rival or his predecessors; but he had been the manager of minor theatres, he knew by experience that low prices drew full houses, and, acting upon this principle when he got into Covent Garden Theatre, where he ought never to have been, he at once reduced the price of admission; the consequence of this was, not that he brought back the better class of audiences, but that he drew to himself all the visitors of the minor establishments. It is true that his company and his dramas of all kinds were a disgrace to a national establishment; but what did that signify? they were quite as good as his audiences had been accustomed

to see under his management at the Surrey and the Coburg.

It is incredible, but not the less true, that with these facts staring him in the face, Bunn remained as blind to the truth as ever. Did he seek for better actors, or for better writers? No; on the contrary he made haste to get rid of Farren and Macready, and became more than ever wedded to the vapid translations of Planchè, who was taken into pay as the regular author of this establishment, while the office of reader was bestowed upon Reynolds, for no other earthly reason that any one could divine, than because he was the very last person to whom such an office should have been trusted. The first object of such a man was, naturally enough, to exclude all talent above his own; and standing so low in the scale as he did, the result was precisely what might have been expected. Maturin had left behind him several MSS., but of course these did not suit the taste of the author of some hundred forgotten five-act farces; the neat and elegant Kenney (author of Raising the Wind," one of the very best of English farces) found no favour in his sight; Jerrold (see the "Doves in a Cage," and that charming composition, the "Painter of Ghent "), the only rival of Sheridan, in vain flashed the beams of his wit in the face of the purblind janitor; Poole and Peake, unequalled in broad humour and in knowledge of the stage, were banished from the legitimate boundaries; while Soane, with all his powers of language and invention, his pathos, and his rich yet delicate humour*, was driven to the Adelphi and the Surrey.

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*Witness the "Frolics of Puck," a work that should be in every library. To show that we do not overrate this author, who is far from being so wellknown as he ought to be, we quote a song from a

little piece acted a few weeks since at the Surrey :

SONG OF THE FAIRIES.
Where should the fairies' dwelling be,
Or in the air, or in the sea?

Oh, not in air! Oh, not in air!
Too bleak the winds are blowing there.
Oh, not beneath the ocean's flow!
Too sad the mermaid sings below;
The joyous elves would pine away
Secluded from their moonlight play.

If not in air, or 'neath the sea,
Where should the fairies' dwelling be?
'Tis in the rose, 'tis in the rose,

When summer's night in brilliance glows;
'Tis in the cowslip's golden bell

The tiny spirit makes his cell;

Or, when the wintry winds are cold,

Lies cradled in the beech-tree old.

In the cant of the day, the theatres had become an unfashionable amusement; but, as we have already seen, the fact was, that Covent Garden had been converted into a minor theatre, while the Drury Lane manager contented himself with second-rate actors, and authors of a yet inferior standing, his only pretensions to respectability being his high prices. Persuaded, however, that the legitimate drama was unfashionable, and seeing that the Italian Opera had still charms for the higher classes, Bunn forthwith changed the national theatre into an Opera House, but one which, like Dame Quickly, was neither flesh, fish, nor fowl, neither English, French, nor Italian, but a heterogenous compound of all three. The Operas themselves were bungling translations from the French; the music was French, German, or Italian, as it might be, but always with mutilations and transpositions to suit the singer's and the manager's notions of the taste of his audience. The dancers were, in one or two instances, French, but in many they were English with Frenchified names; all things being fair, we suppose, in theatricals as in love. To every one except himself it was obvious he had neither singers nor dancers to compete with the Italian and French schools; but as this mis-directed effort was seconded by an immense outlay on scenery, dresses, and decorations, it was for a time successful. Gustavus, as a huge wood-cut informed the public, was a brilliant affair, and forthwith all the world went to see it, slept comfortably through two acts, and came away delighted with-what they had

not seen.

Even that monstrous abortion, the "Jewess," without plot, character, or a glimpse of poetry, was fairly dragged along by Ducrow's horses; and manager and translator sat down at a public supper in high admiration of each other's talents-we cry our reader's mercy-it was the success of Gustavus that was the cause of the grand jubilee.

Here then we have brought down affairs to the present season. What will Bunn do next? He has lowered his prices, because the system of empty show has ceased to attract; but it is done with a vinegar aspect, as appears from his own begging appeal to the public, and with sundry misgivings in regard to the result. The fact is, he does not know what to be about, and there he stands at the theatrical helm, like the poor bear in the boat, now hauling at

this rope, and now at the other, without the slightest idea of what he is doing, but hoping that by some lucky chance he may put his hand to the right, and bring his ship again before the wind.

It is clear, we think, that there now no longer exists a national theatre in the metropolis*; and thus ceases the only plea which could ever be brought forward in defence of the two monstrous monopolies. We ask, therefore, with what shadow of justice does the Government refuse licences to those who would open theatres upon other and better principles? We shall be told perhaps of vested rights—a word, an empty unmeaning word, which has been used to sanction all sorts of abuses, and which, at last, is almost worn out, even with the gullible British public. The monopolist will reply, that the theatres were raised upon the faith of an exclusive privilege. True: but was this exclusive privilege to last for ever? they have had ample time to remunerate themselves for their original outlay, and if they have failed to do so, the fault is with themselves. It is neither just nor desirable that the public should be made to pay for the follies of individuals. A free trade in this, as in everything else, subject only to certain reasonable restraints, must lead to the public benefit; and, as a secondary measure, we strongly advocate the abolition of that useless office, the reader of plays; it is just as gross an invasion of the liberties of the people as an imprimatur on the press would be. Why should not a man act, as well as print, upon his own responsibility? The newspapers are a much more powerful organ than any stage, and more liable to abuse because less subject to the immediate controul of censure; yet the AttorneyGeneral is found to be a sufficient check upon the press, and why not upon the drama? Are the people who visit theatres such mere children, so little able to distinguish between right and wrong, that every piece must be pruned, morally, politically, and religiously, before it can be submitted to them on the stage? Is the licenser of plays the only grown-up man in the com

*We are perfectly aware that Osbaldiston has somewhat mended matters this season, by engaging such actors as Macready, Farren, and Webster: but well says the old proverb, "two or three swallows make not a summer;" and, besides, how has he employed them? Farren is brought on the stage at 11 o'clock at night, when the audience have been bored to death by the screaming of Miss Vincent in "Aladdin," and Webster is made to ride upon a camel.