Lovegrove, &c., &c., a galaxy of talent concentrated in two theatres, and impossible to collect together again, even if it existed, under the free trade system. Yet, in those "palmy days," as mourners over the past are prone to designate them, the vagaries of public taste or caprice often called for "inexplicable dumb shows and noise," and vapid though glittering spectacles, to the exclusion of Shakespeare, Sheridan, and Congreve. The poet says: "Gods! o'er those boards shall Folly rise her head, But it was not the managers who were in fault. They yielded to the pressure from without, and the diminishing balance at the bankers. During the season, now advancing to its close, nearly every theatre in London has been handed over to the prevailing mania for sensation melodramas, many of which are not even favourable specimens of the genus they represent. They are too much tainted by the leaven of immorality, the philosophy of the Dumas, Paul de Kock, and George Sand schools, which sometimes is not palpable on the surface, and so the poison creeps in until we are infected beyond cure, without premonitory symptoms. The "Dundreary" anomaly at the Haymarket is an exception exclusively sui generis, beyond classification, and the really unparalleled" success of which must have equally astonished the manager, the actor, and the audience. It seems unaccountable that the numerous family "of that ilk" should fill the theatre night after night, to witness the display of their own helpless inanities, each fancying that the caricature he so highly enjoys is a veritable portrait of his dear friend and next-door neighbour. But the crowded audiences and the effect produced are palpable facts, in the face of which it is irritating to argue and idle to speculate. We claim to be the foremost nation of the world, and in some respects we are not without solid grounds for the pretension. We aspire to take the lead in civilization, in education, in scientific discovery, in the exercise of all the higher intellectual faculties, in and in the study of ethical wisdom. the practice of morality and religion, Our resources are immense, and being at profound peace, we travel where we please, and obtain access to all the masterpieces of genius, ancient and modern, which cultivated minds delight to study, and the examination of which imparts a refined sentiment of the graceful and beautiful which called into exercise. Yet in spite of otherwise might never have been all these advantages and opportunities, we cannot justly call ourselves a people of lofty and purified taste in the fine arts, and all that belongs to them. We build churches, grotesque rather than inposing, and of no decided or uniform style of architecture; our legislative palaces, profuse in ornament, but crumbling in chronic decay before they are finished. Our public monuments-and foremost amongst them stands the National Gallery-are but too often unsightly masses in unsuitable localities. Our paintings are spoiled by the ruthless restorer, or thrust into corners where there is "no light, but darkness visible:" and although we have still a few good actors, and a national drama in reserve, of unequalled variety and brilliancy, all are sacrificed to exciting but debasing translations from the French, or to the theatrical concoctions of an ephemeral novel. Even now, we see by daily advertisements and paragraphs, that limited liability companies are invited to form themselves for the erection of additional theatres, with increased accommodation, in Holborn, the Haymarket, and Pimlico; and in all probability, the plans, one and all, will be carried out. In England, as Sir Charles Coldstream says, if you want to build a St. Peter's, * The leading incident in Theodore Hook's melodrama of "Tekeli." "A new asylum," Lord Byron says, "for distressed heroes." VOL. LXI.NO. CCCLXVI. 48 you have only to name a committee, open a list of subscribers, meet at a dinner, and the thing is done. These new theatres will, doubtless, follow in the wake of the others, and "sensation spectacles," with stupendously new and hitherto unheard of effects, will continue to be the order of the day, until their temperature exceeds that of the boiling springs of Geyser, and the whole evaporate together in a blaze of spontaneous combustion. And how is all this to be checked or reformed? Again and again we say, the managers cannot do it. The public engendered the evil, and the public alone can cure it. They might be in some degree led thereto by newspaper criticism, if newspaper criticism were as wholesome as it might be made, in an age when there are so many able journals, read by all who can read, and so much literary talent of a high order engaged in their service. But theatrical articles are seldom written con amore, or with careful thought and deliberation. They merge too often into routine, and are dashed off in a hurry to meet the morning issue, and are seldom so elaborately digested as to assume the character of a lecture or analysis, calculated to instruct the novice or check the errors of the profession. We have living critics as able and as acute as the Hazletts and Hunts of a former day, but the system admits of much improvement tending to the most beneficial results. When Whitehead, the poet laureate, addressed his fulsome panegyric to Garrick, containing these lines "A nation's taste depends on you, it was no wonder that the wicked satirist, Foote, clapped his wings, and crowed out, "Cock a doodle doo!" Garrick swallowed the flattery. He was cormorant enough to have digested even a stronger dose; but he had been too long a manager not to know better than that, and he laughed in his sleeve at the hyperbolical nonsense. He felt that the manager depended on the public, and never lost sight of the axiom. When Sir John Fielding asked him to discontinue the "Beggar's Opera," which, he said, filled his office with thieves and pickpockets, Garrick replied that it filled his treasury, which was a clear proof that the people liked it; and when some further conversation took place on the subject, he observed, insolently enough, that he would dramatize the "Pilgrim's Progress" if he thought it was wanted. This flippant remark being repeated, perhaps with additions, led to comments not to his advantage; and Garrick, ever tremblingly alive to censure, said it was a mere post-prandial joke, without any serious meaning, and ought not to have been repeated. If every man's tabletalk were to be set up as the standard by which to estimate his serious character and intentions, we might truly exclaim with honest Falstaff, "Heaven help the wicked." Garrick smiled complacently on Whitehead, invited him to his select parties, listened with suppressed delight and affected modesty when his ode was read, and acted his two heavy tragedies of the "Roman Father" and "Creusa," supported by himself, Barry, Mossop, and Mrs. Pritchard. But he knew there was superior truth in the prologue he had so often repeated, of his surly friend and monitor, Samuel Johnson, and with the concluding lines of which, as equally applicable to the audiences of 1863, we close our article: "Hard is his lot who here by fortune plac'd, Must watch the wild vicissitudes of taste; With every meteor of caprice must play, And chase the new-blown bubbles of the day. Ah! let not censure term our fate our choice; The stage but echoes back the public voice: The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, For we who live to please must please to live." INDEX TO VOL. LXI Abhrain an Bhuideil; A Song. By Hya- Crimean War; Review of Mr. Kinglake's cinth Con Carolan, 284. Adventure, An Indian, 564. Agricultural Change and Manufacturing American Press, The Character of the, 365. Art Writing; Old Styles, 316. Ballad Poetry of Ireland, An Essay on, Battle of the Alma, The, 272. 46 Biographers, Shakespeare's, 3. British Provincial Press, The Political and Catastrophe, A Patrician, 324. Change, Agricultural in Ireland, traced, Character of Lord Raglan, 269. Contrast of Ireland in 1841 and 1861, with Volumes, 259. Cruise about British Columbia, A, 482. Death of Voltaire, 168. Denmark, the Isles of; Customs of the Dr. D'Aubigne's Genevan Volumes, re- Duan na Claev, a Legend in Verse, by Failure and Vices of the English Convict From Jaffa to Jerusalem, 477. Genevan Republic, the Earlier Heroes of, Greek and Eastern Art, by Dr. Pentagram, Gresset, La Bruyere, and Rochefoucauld, Growth of British Journalism, 361. Ireland as a Flax-Growing Country, 247. Judicial Oath, The, 654. La Bruyere, Gresset, and Rochefoucauld, Lady May's Mystery,-a Tale, 107. Legalia, the Judicial Oath, 654. Life and Eccentricities of George Sand, 217. Lines by Hon. Mrs. Norton to the Rev. Literature, Macaronic, 379. LITTLE FLAGGS-The Alms-house Found- Macaronic Literature, its Curiosities, 379. Mildrington, the Barrister, reviewed, 703. Modern Novel and Romance, an Essay on, Modern Preaching as an Art and an Mystery, Lady May's,-a Tale, 107. Novels, Reviewed:-"Chronicles of Carling- Old Recollections and Modern Contrasts, Patrician Adventure and Catastrophe, 324. Penal System, the English; its Failure and 284; A Lament for Donnybrook-a Lay Position and Claims of the Irish Church, Professor Cairnes on America, Our Answer REVIEWS:-"Five Months on the Yang- Roman Catholic Prelates, The "Declara- tions" of, on the Irish Church, 618. Sand, George, Life, Eccentricities, and Sark and Guernsey, Yachting for Mackerel Slavery and Secession: Our Answer to Stephenson, George, The Life of, by Smiles, STERNE AND HIS DAY. Book III.- Crazy Castle;" Chap X., "My Cou- Taepings in China, The, Captain Blakis- ton's "Five Month's on the Yang-tsze," Theatric Representation, Mechanism, and The British Newspaper-the Penny Theory The Case of the Irish Church stated, 618. 733 The Earlier Heroes of the Genevan Repub- The English Penal System Discussed, 116. Voltaire, his Life and his Times, 93; Vol- Witchcraft, Magic, and Sorcery, 687. Author of "The House by the Church- Yang-tsze River, The, and Taëpings, in |