The miscellaneous poems which fill up the volume-one entitled the "Wizard" especially-possess the same merit of rhythm and melody in no common degree. "The Court of Ravenna" comes next to hand. It is a "Comedy" which, if its not being "descriptive of modern manners," had not necessarily disqualified it from competition for the Webster prize, might, in other respects, if all tales be true, have afforded a less infliction on the patience of the judges than the great majority of those submitted to their criticism. It is not without spirit or humour; its great defect is the startling resemblance which the events that took place at the Court of Ravenna, in Duke Charles's time, bear to certain passages which occurred at that of Illyria during the reign of the good Duke Orsino, of musical memory. Like him, we thought we had got to That strain again, And like him also, came rapidly to the conclusion, Enough! no more 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before. At both these courts, it seems, there flourished a certain jolly, riotous, tipsy knight, having a foolish one in tow, whom he made an ass of while he borrowed his money. At both did the jolly and silly knights aforesaid join with the maid and man in a plot to mystify a coxcombical steward, and make him believe his mistress to be in love with him, which they as happily accomplished. Here is sympathy for you!-At both too did the sovereign employ a lady in boy's clothes, whom he believed to be a page, to go and woo his mistress for him, and at both courts did the said psuedo-page eventually exchange her trunk hose for the royal ermine.— Would you desire better sympathy?—Then the aforesaid jolly old knight, like another jolly old knight, who flourished at the court of our Henry the IVth, takes his ease at his inn, runs in debt with his hostess, and if he does not make her "fain to pawn her plate," induces her to "sell her postchaise and horses" in order to supply his necessities; and both by the same promise, which neither has a thought of fulfilling, silence her remonstrances with the hope of her being made "my lady. The principal difference is that at the Boar's Head in East Cheap Sir John "addicts himself to sack," and only throws out a loose hint of the possibility of his having, at some future period, recourse to medicine, while Sir William, at the Swan in Ravenna, prefers "port," and openly patronises "Morrison's Pills!" As we have given a specimen of the blank verse of Mr. Spicer, it is but fair to give one also of the "Author of the Robber's Cave." Paulina (the page) thus acquaints Isabella, the duke's beloved, of the mode in which she received her commission: Hark! and I'll tell you in your little ear- The resemblance in the incidents we have alluded to are, we dare say, altogether as unintentional as they are striking. From the prose portions of his dialogues (by far the best) the author has evidently read much among our early dramatists, and, as Sheridan very truly observed, "Faded ideas float in the imagination like half-forgotten dreams, till fancy becomes suspicious of her offspring, and doubts whether she has created or adopted." Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixere. every "The Widow and her Suitors" is scarcely a fair subject for criticism. It was avowedly written for an entertainment given by a party of amateurs to their friends, and was represented by them a short time since at Miss Kelly's theatre. In pieces composed for such a purpose it will readily be apprehended that what our leading tragedians and comedians, as we have before said, consider a defect, viz., the want of that preponderating importance in some one particular character which is to throw all the others into the shade, becomes a positive merit; there is an histrionic republicanism among "private performers" which renders the prominence of one part disagreeable to those who enact the others, and makes it a difficult task for the "manager" (in general falsely so called) to "cast" any play, save those of Sheridan and a few others, in which part is a gem, without giving mortal offence to the subordinates. This merit, as well as some others, the piece before us unquestionably possesses; it is for the most part smartly written, and has one or two good situations, but, as here printed, it is much too long for representation, retrenchment in action having been, no doubt, one of those "alterations" alluded to in the preface. The story is almost told by the title, and turns upon the devices of various lovers to secure the hand of a rich and fair young widow, who of course eventually bestows it upon the most deserving of them. Mr. Hamilton possesses many of the requisites for success in this style of composition, but he must learn to blot; above all we would recommend him to have an eye in his next essay to professional rather than to amateur embodyings of his flights of fancy; many a valuable hint and hit is often, he may be assured, derived by an author from the former, while the latter, if consulted, acts almost as invariably as a clog upon him. "Gawyim Honor" is a German tale of the Crusades, in blank verse, not without merit as a poem, but with little other pretension to the title of a tragedy than that its catastrophe is melancholy, and the story is detailed in dialogue. THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. AFRICA IN FRANCE; OR, THE BEARD AND THE PIPE. FRANCE has not made a greater impression on Africa than Africa appears to have made on France. In what respects Young Algiers or Young Morocco, have as yet copied the manners and customs of their French conquerors the accounts from the other side of the Mediterranean have not informed us; but nobody can walk through the streets of Paris without observing that a revolution is in rapid progress which is only to be ascribed to an intense admiration and a diligent imitation of the vanquished by the victors: Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit; and, by the same law, we now see the bombarded Moors and the subjugated tribes of Barbary, imposing their houkas and their beards upon "La Jeune France." The French are turning their razors into swords; they seem more disposed to slaughter others than to shave themselves. The fierce and bearded Gaul, rushing through the Palais Royal, with his cigar flaming in his mouth, denouncing peace and Guizot, reminds one of the comet in Milton which from its horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war. Once upon a time there was a "Barbier de Paris," but the race and the trade is extinct; the "occupation is gone;" the French barbers have turned tobacconists, and their cutlers sell only sabres. Voltaire describes his countrymen as a cross between the monkey and the tiger. Times have changed and the generation of to-day is rather a confusion of the monkey with the goat. The heroism of the Boulevards is downright hircine. The man is an appendage of the beard, not the beard of the man, as in the old age. When a party of young Frenchmen approach one, it is like the advance of a herd of goats, or the moving of a forest, "Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane." If Macassar has done this, mighty is Macassar. Bear's grease it can hardly be, unless Ursa Major himself has been immolated to manure the moustaches of monsieur. Imagine a city of Muntzes, or a tribe of Ellenboroughs, or a wilderness of Sibthorpes: we know no other or clearer way to give an idea of the Paris of '44. Paris was always most attractive, but its capillary attractions must now be enormous. If "beauty leads us by single hair," what must manhood do with as many hairs as there are sands in the African deserts, or stars in the galaxy? Considering how natural is the love of proselytising, it is any thing but surprising that France, having bearded herself, should endeavour to beard England. It is just the reverse of the Oct.-VOL. LXXII. NO. CCLXXXVI. L fable of the fox who lost his tail, for France has got a tail to her chin, instead of losing one, and she quarrels with shaven states. We never remember our neighbours so irritable as they are at present. The reason is obvious; they were never so exposed to be plucked by the beard. Fortunately, it is easier just now for England to pluck France by the beard than for France to return the affront. We are still respectable and razored. Our English downs may be exceedingly tame beside the French forests—but if beards put men out of humour, is it not better to go shorn? When we did wear our beards, we wore them merrily, and preferred wagging them at the board to wagging them in the battlefield. The French seem to be of opinion that, because knowledge is power, and wisdom strength, Solomon and Sampson ought to be united; forgetting how little the "robustious locks" of the latter served him, and how he was ultimately subdued by a Lorette with a pair of scissors. A future war with France would not be fought with the gun and the sword; her foes will meet her with the razor, and instead of mowing her ranks, shave them. The only difficulty would be to find razors of sufficient power to hew down the prodigious growth of the modern Gallic chin. Should the razor prove insufficient, we must only take a hint from the Menippus in Lucian, who proposes to shave the philosophers with a hatchet! But it is not alone in the development of the moustaches, and the vegetation of whiskers, that we see manifest signs and tokens of the Africanization of France. Which of the fine arts have the French taught the Arabs and Algerines? It is clear that the latter have immensely improved the French in the fine art of smoking. Tobacco is no longer a luxury-it has become a necessary of Parisian life. The pipe is at once a passion and a principle; the cigar has become an institution, better established, like an article in the charter. At the altitude of thirty or forty feet and upwards from pavé and trottoir, there is not a city in Europe more free from smoke than Paris. Mount the antique towers of Nôtre Dame, scale the column of Napoleon, or look down upon that gay city from the heights of Montmartre, or the dome of St. Geneviève (her patron). How clear and bright is the atmosphere; how easily you count the chimneys; how simple you think it would be to take an exact census of the very tiles! Such smoke as there is proceeding from wood-fires, is scarcely denser than the air with which it mingles. It climbs in thin transparent curls to the sky, and seems so ethereal as to have a natural right, like the incense scat. tered round a shrine, to go up to the gates of Heaven. What a contrast to the dense and sombre cloud which the chimneys of enormous London contribute to the gross firmament that broods over England! It is the fleshly steam from solid beef and pudding compared to the va pour yielded by the omelette, or to the savoury spirit of a vol-au-vent. It is the atmosphere of the close tavern contrasted with that of the airy and lightsome café-what the Blue Post is to Tortoni's-what an eating-house in the Strand is to Véry's or Les Trois Frères. Gazing down upon the Parisian streets and places from any of the commanding positions afforded by the public monuments, or presented by nature, the spectator can hardly believe that he is surveying the me tropolis of the culinary world. The chimneys give but faint evidence of the boiling of a copper, or the simmering of a stew-pan. We miss those sable volumes which testify in our island to the activity of the kitchen, and the hospitality of the house. You would suppose that the French lived upon fruits and flowers, particularly in their delicious autumn, when Flora vies with Pomona to deck their hotels and furnish their desserts-when they might actually sweep their streets with roses and chinaasters, and barricade them, if need were, with peaches and grapes. But, alack! Paris is not the smokeless city which its chimneys proclaim it; far from it; we have only to come down from the house-top and enter the house itself, to discover by two offended senses that the lower region of her atmosphere is polluted by a more obnoxious vapour than the smoke of coal. How many cigars of Paris are equivalent to one chimney of London in the quantity of smoke issued, and the amount of public nuisance caused, let the Michael Cassios investigate; but it is certain that the cigar-smoking grievance has become a serious one in France. You have only to pass through the Palais-Royal, or take a turn on the tumultuous Boulevards, to see with your eyes and smell with your nose the universal use and abuse (convertible terms!) of tobacco in all its forms. Hear the poet of the pipe himself; hear Barthelemy proclaiming that the progress of the age and of his country is not more signal in the march of steam and railways than in the march of the cigar. Deux grands événements signaleront cette ère This is the testimony of a poet of the day; but let any one who doubts |