THE THEATRES.

MR. MACREADY'S FAREWELL PERFORMANCES AT THE HAYMARKET.

THE first term of Mr. Macready's engagement at the Haymarket is now drawing to its close. After Christmas he will again appear at the same theatre, and that second term will probably last till about Mid

summer.

The great enthusiasm with which he was welcomed on the first night of his appearance, and the crowded audiences that have been attracted to the Haymarket every night of Mr. Macready's performances, render this engagement the most important event of the theatrical season.

Several sentiments were blended into the one strong expression of feeling which made the echoes of the Haymarket ring when Mr. Macready stood before his audience in the character of Macbeth.

In the first place, there was the feeling of respect for the gentleman, who, during a long career, has ever laboured to elevate the profession of which he is the chief member. The greatest theatrical eminence has often been connected with the most equivocal social position; but Mr. Macready has, before the world, combined within himself the character of the English actor and that of the English gentleman of the highest order. His private circle comprehends some of the first names in the literature and art of his country; and while his worldly success in his own path is almost without parallel, he is most honourably known as a liberal patron to those who have sought other roads to fame. His respective managements of Covent Garden and Drury Lane, at a time when there was no home for the legitimate drama, will ever be recorded among the most signal events in the history of the English stage. He indeed laid himself open to the objections of those who maintained that by over-elaborate decoration the "suggestive" character of the drama was crushed, and that the proper work of the imagination was anticipated by too material expedients. But when we recollect the style of decoration with which he embellished his pieces -the antique grandeur of his "Coriolanus," the perfect classicality of his "Acis and Galatea,”—we find, we must own, that his productions rose far above the character of ordinary pageantry; that stage decoration, so managed by him, was a high and a novel art; and that the imagination of the greater part of a mixed audience must have been, not anticipated, but surpassed, by such admirable illustration.

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In the second place, there was, in the tribute paid to Mr. Macready, the recognition of the eminent artist-the last of a race of illustrious actors who delighted the public as cotemporaries. His interpretation of the various parts he represents is differently judged by different spectators; and perhaps those who have witnessed the magnates of former days are less lavish of their praise than those who have lived in the present generation only. But none can doubt the high intellectual character of

his acting; throughout his range of plays he always impresses his audience with the belief that all he does is founded on a careful study, and that he is constantly actuated by the true artistic ambition of executing his conception to the utmost degree of perfection. In some of his characters there is nothing left to desire. The slow misery of Werner, the irritable activity of Richelieu, are perfect in their kind; and if we turn to the Shakspearian repertoire, there is the fondness and the peevishness of Lear set forth with the highest degree of truth. We may remark that Mr. Macready's appearance in "Lear," which followed the "Macbeth" and the "Hamlet," was treated almost as a second début, from his known excellence in that particular part.

In the third place, the London public had to read a lesson to the Transatlantic ruffians who insulted Mr. Macready at New York and Philadelphia. The parties engaged in the disgraceful tumults of those cities may learn, if they are capable of learning anything, the estimation in which a gentleman whom they thought fit to revile is held by the most fastidious metropolis of Europe. The measure of indignity offered in the United States has proved an additional stimulus to honour Mr. Macready in his own land. Having touched on this subject, we must state our conviction that the American people is not in the least represented by the mob by which Mr. Macready was assailed. As far as we have heard the opinions of the Americans domiciled here, they have all regretted the taint cast upon their country by a few turbulent individuals.

In the fourth and last place, the series of performances is intended to constitute a "farewell;" and if the merits of Mr. Macready at all times. call for acknowledgment, this is especially the case when he not only returns to his native country after a long absence, but is about to quit for ever the public which has witnessed his triumphs.

The Haymarket Theatre, which is so fortunate in the engagement of Mr. Macready, has also been lucky in an adaptation of the French comedy, "Un Mari à la Campagne," which, under the title of the "Serious Family," forms the staple commodity on "off-nights." The manner in which Mr. Barnett, the adapter, has changed French devotees into "serious" English does him great credit, and his piece is admirably performed by the Haymarket company. Our especial favourite, Miss Reynolds-so lady-like, so graceful, and so inobtrusive-becomes this season more charming than ever.

LITERATURE.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848.*

THE descriptions and opinions of a qualified Englishman and an eyewitness of the French Revolution were, even amidst the multiplicity of publications, a great desideratum. It is impossible for a Parisian to divest himself of the prejudices of party, and still less so of the halo of extravagance with which he invariably invests contemporary events of a remarkable and exciting character. Captain Chamier's clear and vigorous apprehension of the truth, his easy discrimination of the real from the unreal, by divesting both the character and proceedings of late of all the glitter that is imparted to them by the pens of Lamartine, Caussidière, and other French historians, presents us with the same facts in almost an extreme of nakedness and reprobateness. Even if the common rule was followed in such a case of taking the middle line between the two classes of writers it would still be bad enough. The revolution would remain a thing of accident, and therefore a stigma upon a nation, followed by a sanguinary struggle which is a stain upon the times we live in, and a blur upon the boasted civilisation of the metropolis of the world.

"A Frenchman," says Captain Chamier, "is altogether an indescrib able animal; his heart is in his heels. Nature formed him for a caperer; he appears quite incapable of sincerity, and will swear fidelity and allegiance to half a hundred kings, without the smallest intention of keeping his promise."

He is also, according to the same authority, given to another recreation, of a more dangerous kind, and that is political discussions. The French, who, despite their indecent and inelegant dances, and their savage war-whoops, are (if we believe their own account of themselves) the most accomplished and refined people in the whole world, also believe themselves to be the cleverest people in the world; their national conceit on this point, continues Captain Chamier, is extraordinary, and he adds, after alluding to the luxury and the vice, the dishonesty and the deception that reign in the capital, "With a population of this description, where every man believes himself out of his proper sphere, and where every man declares himself quite competent to take the situation of minister of finance, or of public works; and what is still more deplorable, where every man is more or less a soldier, one cannot wonder that such sudden changes should occur as those we have lately witnessed."

We have elsewhere devoted a few pages to the consideration of the social state of that city, in which, in the words of an old diplomatist, "the streets are paved with deceit and falsehood; and every step a man takes in this city of vice is on the pathway of dishonesty and deception ;" we need not therefore follow Captain Chamier in his corroborative remarks. It is evidently, however, to the vices of the Parisians, their interference in other persons' business and neglect of their own, their love of pleasure and luxury, their dissipation, profligacy, and gambling propensities, and other sins, that he traces the difficulties and the sufferings of the nation, and that a future fall of despair alone presents itself to his eyes.

Captain Chamier watched the progress of events on the 22nd of *A Review of the French Revolution of 1848: from the 24th of February to the Election of the First President. By Captain Chamier, R.N. 2 vols. Reeve, Benham, and Reeve.

February from a balcony exactly opposite the garden of the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères; but it was on his return home by the Champs Elysées, he says, that the first slight collision occurred, and this was an attack made by the populace upon a solitary lancer riding a very tired horse. Captain Chamier should, however, have said the first collision that he witnessed, for it is evident, by his own subsequent showing, that the guard-house in the Avenue Matignon had been stormed and fired by that time. That awful word to French ears was also by this time heardbarricades; but in feeding the flames at the guard-house, or picking up the pavement for barricades, Captain Chamier saw the gamins de Paris most active. Two boys, he says, certainly neither of them seventeen years of made the barricade at the corner of the Rue Montaigne. Captain Chamier follows Lamartine and Caussidière in attributing the fatal shot fired at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Lagrange; but he is more explicit than any French writer in denouncing the conduct of the National Guard upon this great occasion. "An armed population," he justly remarks, "is the most fatal barricade against true liberty; they are as often used to suppress as to support it; and when these featherbed soldiers become a political body they are as dangerous to the state as a revolutionary army."

age,

No new light is thrown upon the fatal contretemps that occurred in the succession of ministries."Monsieur Thiers," says Captain Chamier, "shrinking from the responsibility which a Clarendon would have courted and a Grey demanded, begged that Monsieur Odilon Barrot might be president of the council!" General Lamoricière, our author says, would, had he received orders, have gallantly done his duty. The Duke de Nemours, he says, had before offered to place himself at the head of the troops. "Sir," the king had replied, "you are not yet regent; wait my orders." The duke, hurt by the reproof, retired to his apartments; and this may explain his absence on other occasions, which some have attributed to another and a less pardonable reason. Captain Chamier relates the king's escape after Alexander Dumas's version, and the breaking-up of the assembly from his own evidence, and he concludes the description of that ever-memorable event by saying, "The nation was to decide, and yet the provisional government were named-or named themselves—in the presence of about 500 people at the most, out of 35,000,000, and took especial good care to call that election the universal opinion of the country.

Never had any word such terrific effect as the word Republic. From the moment it was mentioned, all courage in this great nation seemed stifled: men spoke with hesitation and with caution; the guillotine was before their eyes, ruin stared them in the face; and yet they bowed their heads, cried "Vive la République!” and bared their backs to the severe lash about to be inflicted. In after years this will appear incredible. A nation, famed for its valour-a nation which, under Napoleon, conquered the vast extent between the Pyramids and Moscow, whose very name created fear and alarm throughout Europe, to whom kings bowed and emperors capitulated-that such a nation could be frightened at a word!-that all the provinces should accept what they all feared—that a street émeute in Paris, and a declaration made in noisy acclamations by, at the most, five hundred men, should be unresistingly accepted, with the consciousness of ruin, by thirty-five millions of people-this is a cowardice of which the history of the world can give no parallel. Where were all the nobility of this great country? people proud of their rank and privileges, men of fortune, of talent, of supposed courage-where were the mass of independent citizens who existed but by order, and whose growing riches marked the increase of commerce and the tide of prosperity-and where were the National Guards of Paris, a body composed of all the house

holders and shopkeepers who grew opulent by the influx of strangers and the allurements of the court?

Captain Chamier, speaking individually of the French, says that there are among them many of the finest of mankind-men of the highest honour and repute-brave, chivalrous, generous-real patriots. The pens of all the writers in creation," he in one place observes, "cannot bestow sufficient praise on the Parisians for their honesty during the excesses of the revolution ;" but the gallant captain has also what he terms an unmitigated horror of all people who pretend to be either more patriotic or pious than their neighbours; and while he praises the Parisians individually, he scourges them "generally," with an unsparing pen. "Certainly," he says in conclusion, "the annals of history can scarcely parallel a crown so lost, without even a struggle-a flight so ignominious and disgraceful—a nation so disloyal—a panic so universal— a king so disguised-or a people so treacherous."

The most fatal of all expressions, Captain Chamier says, is the perpetual "Enfin que voulez-vous?" accompanied by the inevitable shrug of the shoulders. During the hottest of the 24th of February, he adds, he endeavoured to rouse some of the National Guard to defend the crown, by representing to them the horrors of the former revolution. "C'est bien vrai," was the answer; "mais enfin que voulez-vous?" When the Republic was declared, at the desire of a handful of ragamuffins, the nation accepted it with the enfin que voulez-vous? and the appropriate shrug!

The French are not sparing of their criticism of other countries: they call themselves the centre of civilisation, the sanctuary of the arts and sciences, the nest of poetry, and the consummation of chivalry; yet they drive about a fat ox, have a pack of half-naked women and savages hopping about the animal, and retain in this wonderful refuge for the destitute all the folly of a nation of heathen times. As for their chivalry, the twenty-fourth of February is quite sufficient proof of that.

The French must not be astonished if they themselves are severely criticised, since day after day they "play such fantastic tricks before high Heaven" as make quieter nations doubt much if France, instead of being the birthplace of the arts, is not one large national Charenton.

After describing the clubs which succeeded to the Provisional Government, with the graphic pen of an eye-witness, Captain Chamier adds—

By degrees the clubs became partially deserted: nothing outlives three months in France; she is a fickle female, ever changing, inconstant in her governments as in her affections, and this arises from that envy, hatred, and malice against all who succeed. A Frenchman can pardon anything in his friend, but success; let a man arrive at riches, greatness, and power, and every poodle in Paris will howl at his heels, and snap at his shoes. Her best government is a tyranny,-the best security for Paris is a state of siege. Liberty is the most extreme of all possible possibilities: it is a word frequently used, and never understood. The liberty of the press, for example, is another chimera; the liberty of the person another. The liberty to assemble, doubtful; the liberty of opinion, quite impossible. We are told in every street in Paris, that the French are the most educated, the most inventive of mankind; that genius resides in the Valley of the Seine, and yet behold its works.

Again, and in a similar strain, when noticing the alliance proposed by these complaisant conspirators with England, when it was asserted by the red republicans of the day, as it has since been by the freetrading fraternising Eutopists of our own country, that France and England are united by bonds of peace and fraternity-that Dover and Calais are the bills of two cooing doves-Captain Chamier says