was an imbecile;-not so the queen. Her face
was repulsive at first; but after conversing
with her two or three times, she would get rid
of a timidity mingled with pride, which fet-
tered both her words and actions, and become
really amiable. She had the same desire to
please in conversation that I found in her mo-
ther, the Queen of Spain. The First Consul
soon appreciated both husband and wife. Poor
Louis I., king of the beautiful and fertile Tus-
cany, knew no more what he was to do when he
went to take possession of his palace of Pitti,
than if the First Consul had invested him with
the crown of Abyssinia. He added to his na-
tural incapacity another infirmity, which made
Napoleon say with a frown-Hum!-Had I
known that, he should have remained where

he was!'

OUR LIBRARY TABLE.

WE never sit down in a churlish mood to discuss the offerings which come from the east, west, north, and south, to our library table: we look upon it as a sort of repast, in which little that is bitter mingles, and we read, and ponder, and write in a benevolent mood, which nothing can ruffle. Were it not for this easy placidity of temper, we should be somewhat angry with the author of St. John in Patmos,' one of "the oldest living poets in Great Britain." He has introduced his poem with a peevish preface, in which he laments the honour which has been

-we were cer

paid by Southey to "Sisters of the Sacred Well
and bashful Liverymen," and cavils at the
praise bestowed by the Quarterly Review and by
Blackwood on Fanny Kemble. This "oldest of
the living poets" seems to forget that he has been
not a little praised himself in these and other
periodicals. He complains that "uneducated
and humble claimants for fame are sometimes
brought out of the shade" by the Quarterly, and
calls on Mr. Lockhart to eulogize a certain
gentleman of the name of Pennie, who has
written a work called 'Britain's Historical
Drama,' for whom "poverty, and neglect, and
almost critical silence, is the portion." Now,
we had our good-humoured laugh at Southey's
inspired serving-man, in his livery of indus-
try, turned up with morality.*
tainly not warm in our commendation of Mary
Collingt-we expressed some astonishment at
the exaggerated praise of Francis the First
-and so far from being "critically silent"
on Mr. Pennie, we, months since, made his
dramas the leading article of our paper,§—we
are free, therefore, to express the opinion, that
either John Jones, Mary Colling, or Fanny
Kemble, have quite as much of the divine
spirit in them as Mr. Pennie, the Homer of "the
oldest poets of Great Britain," whose work, if
we remember right, came out under the patron-
age of the Royal Family-was noticed in almost
all the Reviews, and passed into speedy oblivion,
like other respectable works which are less
than inspired. Of the poem before us, we have
little to say there are many pretty lines, tender
sentiments, and passages both strong and har-
Richard of York, or, the White Rose of England. monious; and we could set some of the pious

"One day, the King of Etruria, being engaged to dine at Malmaison, was, on alighting from his carriage, attacked by a strange complaint. I was crossing the vestibule, when I found myself in the midst of the tumult occasioned by this circumstance. The queen seemed much grieved, and wanted to conceal her husband; but the thing was impossible: the face of a king who has the falling sickness, however insignificant he may otherwise be, cannot be concealed from a number of persons standing by. When I saw him he was as pale as death, and his features absolutely distorted. His swoon did not last long, but it was dreadful. When he entered the saloon, Madame Bonaparte asked him, with an appearance of concern, what was the matter: "Oh, nothing-nothing!-is there, Louisa? Nothing-a pain in my stomach-I am hungry-I shall make a good dinner-I said so to Pepita: did I not Pepita?' -and the smile upon those livid and contracted lips had something hideous. The First Consul, who knew not then this frightful addition to the defects of his protégé, really believed he had a pain in his stomach. After dinner he was, I believe, made acquainted with the truth, for he was very thoughtful; and several times, as he looked at the king, his brow contracted, and his physiognomy assumed an expression of displeasure."

3 vols. London: Fisher & Co.
THERE are writers who believe nothing more
easy than the composition of a historical novel;
an incident from some school abridgment, the
names of a few leading characters from the same
respectable authority, and perhaps some few
hints from an old chronicle, seem to afford suffi-
cient materials for fancy to amplify into three
volumes. They know not the deep study requi-
site to become acquainted with the habits of
thought and action that prevailed in any age
gone past-they care not for the revolutions both
in motive and opinion that Time bears on its
stream, and they are therefore guilty of the worst
species of anachronism by transferring the mind
of one century to another as different from it
as possible. The errors of costume and etiquette
in these volumes are sufficient to drive a whole
Antiquarian Society out of their senses; nor can
we say that probability of incident serves to re-
deem those errors. The writer, however, dis-
plays a considerable share of talent, which we
would gladly see employed on a subject more
patiently meditated and more accurately exe-
cuted.

The Antiquities of Greece. By the Rev. R. B.
Paul, M.A. Oxford, Vincent; London, Whit-
taker & Co.

A very excellent and unassuming manual of
useful information. Though the author modestly
calls the work a compilation, it contains many
valuable original observations, manifestly the
result of deep thought and sound knowledge.

pictures in a frame-work of praise, and hang
them up for the admiration of our readers. But
we in this will imitate Mr. Bowles himself: we
advise our friends to let the work pass, and to
read what the apostle himself says in the Reve-
lations. The oldest of living British poets has
not the power to expound in verse the meaning
of those dark but glorious visions.

'Leonora: a Tragedy.' This drama is written
by Sir Archibald Edmonstone, Bart., and the
scene is laid in Spain. There are some natural
and sweet passages; but there is less force and
elevation than we could wish. Several of the
speeches of the Lady Leonora have a gentle and
household air, which touches us more than
stormier matters :-

LEONORA.

Thou then hast suffer'd?
Hast felt the storms of life beat rudely on thee?
I do not ask the tale, I feel my heart
Would shrink at the first sound that told thy sorrows;
But henceforth shall they cease: thou dost not know
How potent anodyne is woman's love!
To man was given to master the wide world,
And wield the fate of empires; but to us
To strew the path with flowers, and attract
Within the silken meshes of affection
The lords of earth themselves. O, I will watch
Each motion of thy brow, as a fond mother
Hangs o'er her infant's cradle:-dost thou smile,
I then will laugh, be gay, and catch thy humour;
Or art thou serious, to thy sage discourse
My measured wit allows: but if one pang,
I will dispose my thoughts, and bear what part
If aught of pain remembered come across thee;
Then all those tender, guileless, nameless wiles,

From the hid treasury of the female breast,
I will call out to win thee from thy sorrow.
And should my fond device prove powerless,
A tear of sympathy shall wet thy cheek,
And every trace of care wash out for ever!

'The Grecian.' This is a pretty periodical, and takes its name from the highest class of scholars in Christ's Hospital school; nor is it unworthy of the class which once owned Coleridge, Middleton, Lamb, and Leigh Hunt.

New Children's Friend.' 2 vols. In a multitude of counsel there is safety, saith the wise man; and assuredly, if our children go astray, it will not be for lack of admonition, for the press teems with books of instruction. The merits of Mrs. Markham are well knownsound, sensible, and sagacious-affectionate and motherly: she addresses herself to the young; but the old cannot be the worse for reading her clever conversations.

Twenty Parochial Sermons.' Mr. Girdlestone, of Sedgely, in Staffordshire, after having delivered these sermons to his congregation, was desirous of fixing them more surely in their memories, and so sent them to the press, and produced them in this cheap and accessible form. We have known this author through his works for some time: he is a sound and practical preacher; his style is familiar and vigorous: he is not ambitious about splendour of diction, nor harmony of periods; and yet he finds both sometimes without seeking them.

:

'Sir Simon League, the Traveller, a Poem.'-
Sir Simon, an Englishman, wanders in many
countries, and is laughed at in them all he is
a kind of absurd Don Juan; and the lightness
and gaiety of the verse which records his deeds,
often remind us of Byron's poem. There are
many ludicrous pictures - -some grave, and
some of a mingled nature-and all dashed off
with a ready and vigorous hand. The following
verses we think very beautiful:-
Warmly the bosom of our Wanderer yearned
Toward his hearth and early home, I ween,
For his whole body with emotion burned,
And strange electric feelings past between
His heart-strings; trifles, half forgotten, turned
Soon into matters of importance-seen
Through absence, which lets greater things retire,
Or stand unnoticed-like a magnifier.
As it should ever be! our thoughts are thine,

Old England! envied England! use what glass
Thou wilt, Sir Simon: make her sweet shores shine
Before thee-gleaming from her velvet grass,
Reflection raised a simple village-shrine,
And rural habitations, which surpass
Others, and over them his turrets stood-
Like giants peering from a chesnut wood,
An evening star rose up! and in their pen
His white flocks slumbered: while a circuit made
About his park, and common, and his glen,
And broken fence, afar, and little glade,
And tiny hill, Sir Simon took again,

And the last line of yellow poplars played
Quivering before him, and his own bright skies
Blushed through remembrance, and he wiped his eyes.

Nor will the fine lines upon Tycho Brahe sound harsh after the gentle ones we have quoted:Ye scourges of your kind, forgotten long,

What were ye, floating on a noisy flood
Of Fame, beside this sage? unsung in song!
Ye conquerors, who see his laurels bud,
What are ye? circled by a silent throng
Of virgins, clotted with fraternal blood,
Over the necks of white-haired fathers tread,
Or through the living walk-upon the dead.
Make nations nameless, and the wretched earth,
Successively, your footstool, and, at last,
Find comfort in the dust, that gave ye birth,
The worms your counsellors; your fame a blast
Of curses, wrung from myriads in their mirth:
Down shall your brazen monuments be cast,
And Justice to your pedestals succeed,
And Independence from oppression freed.

In truth, this first canto of Sir Simon' abounds with so many admirable verses, that we desire much to see a second, when we shall go more at length into the subject, and talk a little seriously to the author on the right use of no ordinary powers. The work is printed in Paris.

'Britton's Tunbridge Wells.'-When we are weary and worn in the service of the public, we

shall take Mr. Britton's book in our hands, and make our way to Tunbridge Wells, and read and drink, and drink and read, and between two wholesome and strength-restoring things, renew our vigour, and become fit again for critical tear and wear.

The thirty-seventh volume of the WAVERLEY NOVELS- The Betrothed'—the second of' Miss Edgeworth's Tales'-the sixth of 'Lord Byron's Works'-and the twelfth of Roscoe's NOVELIST'S LIBRARY, are on our table. There is a pleasant preface, and a few notes to 'The Betrothed,' but the one thing especially deserving mention is the illustration by Edwin Landseer, a picture of great beauty, well-engraved by R. Gravels. The Byron concludes Moore's Life, and includes several miscellaneous prose pieces, among others his lordship's parliamentary speeches, and the Letters on the Pope Controversy. Miss Edgeworth's volume contains Forrester'. 'The Prussian Vase' and 'The Good Aunt,' with

illustrations by Harvey-and the Novelist's Library, the conclusion of 'Tristram Shandy' and the 'Sentimental Journey.'

The Rose of Four Seasons.'-"The following

ORIGINAL PAPERS

SKETCHES FROM COMMERCIAL LIFE.
No. I.

369

the young people intend to be prudent; he
is head clerk in some establishment, on a
salary of three hundred per annum-has a
good character-fell in love-saved money
to furnish a house-furnished it, and is now
married. So they go on respected and re-
spectably.
better himself arises on the part of the young
After a few years, a desire to
man, he gives up his clerkship, enters into
with a thousand pounds between them, sets
partnership with some one like-minded, and
bill, or a bad debt, or the necessity of selling
up in business, which business, a returned
ing at the right, probably finishes up in
at the wrong time, or the incapacity of buy-
eighteen months. He is again adrift in the
has five children; he advertises for a situ-
world. He has no monied friends--but he
ation till his heart is sick, and his coat
shabby-perhaps he is very fortunate, and
obtains one at half his original salary; or
perhaps he goes to America, or perhaps dies,
and then his wife takes in sewing.

Let us look in at the inhabitants of the

house opposite. To the parties last named,

a similar residence was a rise in the world—
gests many mournful thoughts to those who
to the present, it is a descent, and, what
sug-
know what it often implies, it is their first.
successful speculator; a commercial magnate
The gentleman was a leading merchant; a

THE extremes of social life, the highest
and the humblest, have absorbed somewhat
too much of the attention of writers of fiction.
Princes and shepherds; peeresses and beg-
gar-girls; leaders of ton and inmates of a
prison, seem to have taken out a patent to
supply tales and novels, if not poetry, with
incidents and characters. Such a phrase as
the romance of middle life, may sound strange,
particularly as I mean really middle life;
not that which, from the combined possession
of wealth, taste, and education, may be
which, by an abundance of style, and a super-
called aristocracy without rank; nor yet that,
abundance of affectation, calls itself fashion-
able, and fancies itself refined;—the fashion,
silver-gilt; the refinement, varnish. I am not
thinking either of a cottage ornée and a pony-
phaeton, or of a grave brick hall, architecture
and date, the reign of Elizabeth; owner, a
squire and magistrate;—I mean really middle
life, and in a commercial town, and in a
staid, reputable, but unattractive street in
such town; the houses precisely of a level,
their fronts affording a precise parallel of
one door one window, one window one
door; the intersecting plots of ground
thoroughfare nor a lounge; the houses merely science; that, he remains still, but his mer-
appropriated to clothes-drying; neither a and, in addition to this, a man of taste and
to live in; the pavement merely a means to cantile glory has departed from him. By some
get from one point to another. Yet I ven- sudden crisis, by some over-bold speculation,
ture to think, that such a street may be full
of materials for poetry and fiction. There easy" methods of being ruined, which exist
or some one of the thousand short and
may be nothing winning, either for good or
for bad in such a locale; the daily lives of Calico, Printwell, & Co., or of Boads, Indigo,
in trade, the failure of the great house of
its inhabitants may at first sight appear flat & Brothers, is suddenly announced-drawing
as Salisbury Plain; but, if we had power to
strip off the outer covering, the shroud-lights in its train. Our merchant's wife is
down, like a falling star, not a few lesser
ing domino of common-places-could we
find out the hopes, fears, joys, sorrows, and
struggles, which are not mere appurtenances
mediately from a peculiar modification of life
of the human condition, but which spring im-
and circumstances-could we pierce the sur-
face, and do justice to the "heart that suffers
and endures," there would be no lack of
incident, no deficiency of romance. The
history of a few streets in a commercial town,
might be more sombre than Miss Mitford's
ever-pleasant "village," because commercial
life is subject to perpetual vicissitude. "To
break or not to break," is a reading that
the eyes of those who see the event in all its
Hamlet's soliloquy daily undergoes; and in
ramifications, a single case of bankruptcy is
often no mean tragedy. Yet, who pauses
over the Gazette ?-Let us take a case, so
common that it hardly deserves to be singled
out: let us fancy it occurring in one of the two
rows of houses already described. The dwel-

selections (says the editor of the verses which compose this little pretty volume,) are designed to assist the parent or teacher in forming the taste of young ladies, by supplying a series of readings in prose and poetry, chosen with great care in point of composition, and with an earnest desire to make religion the prominent feature of the work." Pray, what would the scholars of our amiable teacher think, if he came to them with a basketful of cherries, and said, "My dear children, fear the Lord, and eschew evil: I have stolen these ripe cherries, as a meet present for you, therefore eat and spare not"? The very youngest would think that he had begun strangely with his instruction;-in like manner, we fear, so far as similitude goes, has this nosegay of devout and pure poetry been gathered. Had the editor permission from Mrs. Norton, Mrs. Hemans, and Mary Howitt; or from Montgomery, Barton,-we quote as they come, - Marriott, Chalmers, Southey, Wordsworth, Barry Cornwall, or Hervey, to pick these jewels out of their works? If we are zealous in our reprobation of this practice, it must be excused-"a fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind." Much of our periodical literature exists by this sort of literary robbery. One of the least offensive papers has honestly taken the name of The Thief; and last week, in addition to an acknowledged folio column or two from the Athenæum, transferred from this Paper Mr. Hood's poem, "The Fall,' and printed it as an original contribution to their own. A paper, too, of more pretensions, the New Bell's Messenger, makes equally free with us, and lately, in one number, copied the article on Crabbe, the Poet, without acknowledgment, and the 'Confessions of Peyronnet,' which it introduced by a neat little paragraph, beginning, "We have translated," &c. While another, called the Literary Guardian, not content with stealing from, affects to criticize us-which, admitting their objections to be just, is about as impertinent as the abuse of a pick pocket, because your hand-ling at present rather outshines its neighbours, kerchief was Spitalfields instead of Bandana.We had occasion to notice not long since, that owing to this dishonest system, an article copied months ago from the Athenæum, but without acknowledgment, into the Journal of Education, was thence transferred, with equal forgetfulness of the source, into the Literary Gazette, where it appeared as an original article; and this week there is a long quotation in the Hampshire Telegraph, a paper of great sale and high character, from the Greenock Advertiser, which the latter had, we must presume, printed without acknowledgment of its source, for it appeared originally

in this paper.

has recently been "beautified" for a new-
married pair. The furniture is new, and
not only smart, but good; and every time
dow-curtains, with their amber fringe depen-
you catch a view of the green moreen win-
dencies, you wish the future inhabitants
happy. Some fine day, the young couple
arrive, after a week's holiday at some wed-
ding-place in the neighbourhood. There is
at first a little finery, a little visiting, a
bright blue coat on the part of the husband,
an attempt at a French hat on that of the
lady, but very soon bridal show subsides,

6

and ladylike; the son has had a college
like many of her class, sensible, intelligent,
education, and is just called to the bar-the
loss of his father's property may to him be
an ultimate advantage, forcing him to labour
heartily and steadily, after professional ad-
vancement-it is otherwise with the mer-
chant's daughters: stylish, accomplished,
luxuriously brought up--and four in number
Farewell now to the establishment that would
-to them the reverse is a thunder-stroke.
not have disgraced a nobleman! farewell to
hot-houses, gardens, grounds, carriages, routs,
watering-places, and Parisian milliner!
verty's is come! There is not the refuge
Enjoyment's occupation's gone'-and po-
it was embarked in her husband's extending,
of a jointure-the mother had fortune, but
and, at the time, most prosperous concern;
and, if any one asks what remains to the
family the only answer is-"A blank, my
lord." However, what our poor clerk wanted,
our fallen merchant has-connexions and
monied friends. Creditors, who are themselves
commercial men, are by no means an unge-
but a straight-forward, intelligible case of
nerous hard-hearted race; fraud or shameful
misfortune will rarely be severely dealt with.
extravagance may make them a little savage,
Our merchant, cautioned perhaps against
speculation and high living, is set up again
in a small way: the family, with the plainest
of their furniture, and two women servants,
come to the plain residence in the plain street
worst that may, that often does, happen: as
we set out with describing. This is not the

yet, the family "dwell together in unity;" gay friends and gay pleasures are gone; eligible lovers are not rife in a family of portionless daughters, and your true lover is generally in want of means himself: nevertheless, the family is not broken up-and if "charity covers a multitude of sins," social affection softens a multitude of annoyances. But in a year or two, when beginning to adapt themselves happily to mediocrity of circumstances, some fresh mischance happens in the way of trade; they are wrecked a second time-and the second gathering of fragments is smaller, and the second appearing of hope for the future, is fainter far than the first. Severe misfortune is the true maker of heroes and heroines; the medium often brings out medium virtue. But, not to dilate on a digression, the two youngest daughters avow themselves "in want of situations," (oh, the intense wretchedness often hid in that phrase!) and the two eldest open a school at home; the father, now an uncertificated bankrupt, perhaps teaches the pupils writing, and the mother becomes household drudge; or, all the daughters go out governessing, and the mother takes in boarders-and these efforts are made promptly, cheerfully, and without parade.

|

attempting to make a timid, tender, studious lad, a good tradesman. It would have been kinder to have buried him-aye, even before death. However, to the mart he came, young, strange, and solitary; was installed in his situation; found lodgings; was thankful for anybody's notice; never hinted that he was wretched, and strove hard to comprehend business. The establishment was immense, and he felt himself a cipher in it; a cipher in the town; amongst his species; in the world-a cipher every where. Unlike many youths, who have set out in life with tempers equally shy, he did not by contact with busy life gain courage or independence; he did not, by observing the alternations of success and vicissitude, become ambitious. The old lady with whom he boarded, loved him for his quiet orderly habits, his gentle manners, and (for mortality is frail) his small appetite and contentedness with her not very strong tea. He made no friendships; those who lodged under the same roof with him boarded themselves; they had longer purses, greater spirits, and coarser tastes. He heard from home seldom, for he had no sisters; his mother, whose pet he had been, was dead; his brothers were toiling hard at their appointed avocations-postage was expensive, Let us look in at one more dwelling in the and his father thought Colin in the high way same street. It is a boarding-house for to happiness-alias, getting on in the world; clerks; from these let us single out one. He so that a letter once a quarter, with a page was the cadet of a good Scotch family; but of family news and a codicil of good advice, good Scotch families are often large; and was the average of his receipts per post. after drafting off two or three to India, a Partly pride, and partly conscientiousness, sufficiency remained for law, physic, divinity, sealed his lips from murmuring; he did his and trade. Colin, the youngest, after being best, and bore up his best: but the change of kept too long both at home and at school, to life, from the pure atmosphere of the country, please a sickly mother, came, after her death, and the yet more genial one of affection, in urgently recommended to a leading mercan- less than a year wrote its effects on a frame tile house, and, on the strength of such re- naturally fragile. The smoke, the noise, the commendation, was esteemed fortunate in occupied air of all around him, was a perpefalling heir to a tall stool, seventy pounds atual weariness to his spirits; the quantity of year, and occupation from twelve to fourteen occupation required from him had always hours a day. And as times go, and youths tasked his strength to the utmost; by deprosper, he was fortunate; the interest of the grees he became physically incapable of it, case lies not in any hardship of circumstances, and at last was laid up. The catastrophe except as opposed by the moulding of his need occupy but few lines, as few as the poor character. As Caleb Balderstone said, that boy's epitaph: nursing and tears on the part Mysie's "savoury dishes were no just common of his attendant-a summons to his father, saut herring"- -so say we of Colin. Trade instantly obeyed-a physician called in to is a beautiful pursuit for all who have a write one prescription, and declare medicine genius for it; that is, for those who have, or useless-his funeral over-his little debts who have set their hearts on acquiring, a paid-his father gone home-"To Let," in capital to embark in it. Politics can hardly the window of his room-seventy applicants be more exciting than trade, to a person who for his clerkship—and all in ten brief days! has true commercial ambition; literature contains not more poetry than trade, to one who has true mercantile sensibility-to whom bargains, and bargain-making, are the true meat, drink, washing, and lodging of life. But the glories of a dingy warehouse, surmounted with blue board and gold letters, shine afar off to a junior clerk, and the youngest of nine sons; and Colin would have had no love of such glories, even had he been head of the most famous firm for the manufacture of dimity quiltings, and eldest of his eight brothers. He had a delicate body, and a dreamy delicate mind; would have lived delightedly as a minister on fifty pounds a year in his native glen, aiding his stipend by his fishing-rod, finding companions in his books, sympathy in his flute, and happiness in his duties. He was an instance of the cruelty of stimulating the sensibility of a boy who must fight his way in the world, and of the short-sightedness of

THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.

WE lately had the pleasure of noticing the visit of the Ettrick Shepherd to London, and the hopes which he entertained of mending his fortune, by a republication of his works; we have now the pain of saying, that all his hopes are frustrated, by the bankruptcy of Mr. Cochrane, his bookseller, and that, in consequence, he is overwhelmed with difficulties, such as he could neither foresee nor prevent. To relieve him from these, is the object of his friends; and that it may be done with due delicacy, it is proposed to publish an edition of his chief poem, 'The Queen's Wake,' by subscription; and Mr. Murray, Albemarle Street, and Mr. Duncan, Paternoster Row, have generously undertaken to conduct the impression, so that the whole profits shall go to the aid of the poet at once. The matter will not, we fear, be mended,

unless the work commences with a good list of subscribers, and as the exigency of the case is great, it is hoped that the price of the volume, one guinea, will be paid on subscription, so that the Ettrick Shepherd may be released from the pressure of immediate distress. We earnestly entreat our friends to give the suffering poet all the help they can: the miseries which men of genius, and the followers of the muse in particular, have to sustain, are many and severe; and it is enough perhaps to have starved Otway, Butler, Burns, and Bloomfield, without adding James Hogg to the number. We call on the titled and the wealthy, to think of the poet of Ettrick now; we call on London, on its citizens, its knights, its lords, its earls, nay, on its princes -on all, in short, who courted the company of the poet, and enjoyed his conversation, and the chaunting of his songs and ballads, to come forward with their guineas at this moment of crushing distress, and prove that their love of genius was real and not affected. It gives us sincere pleasure to add, that one of the first names on the as yet short list of subscribers is that of Samuel Rogers, and another, that of the Lord Chancellor Brougham.

ON DRAMATIC COPYRIGHT.

coming work, on the Statistics of France, by The following is an extract from a forthMr. Lewis Goldsmith. In it is shown, both the law and the usage on this subject in France. The question is deeply interesting House of Commons has been lately, on the to many literary men, and a committee of the motion of Mr. Bulwer, appointed to inquire into it.

"After the opinion we have offered, on the present state of the French drama, we shall conclude this branch of the subject with an analy sis of the laws, by which the rights of dramatic authors are protected.

"In the first place, the managers and proprietors of theatres are absolutely prohibited from the representation of any dramatic work whatever, without the express permission of its author, under the penalty of the confiscation of the entire receipts of the house, in favour of the author, on the night on which his piece has been surreptitiously performed.

"As to the theatres in Paris, a tarif has been adopted, which fixes the specific proportion of the receipts, which are to be paid to the author, on every night of the representation of his work. At the Theatre Français, where what is called the regular drama is exclusively performed, the author, if his piece be of five acts, receives a twelfth part of the nett receipts; if of three acts, an eighteenth; and if of one or two acts, a twentyfourth. The Théâtre Feydeau pays eight and a half per cent. for three-act pieces, and six per cent, for those of one or two acts; the amount

being divided in equal proportions between the author and composer. The proportions paid by the Odeon are the same as those of the Théâtre Français, for tragedies and comedies, and for operas, the same as the Feydeau. In consequence of the keen competition which exists among the theatres on the boulevards, the society of dramatists have found it most for their interest, to leave the amount of the author's remuneration to be fixed by special agreement with the proprietors. This remuneration is usually paid as in London, in a single sum, without reference to the success or failure of the piece, but with this difference in favour of the author, that he is still entitled to the benefit of the law, which prohibits the performance of his