its appearance. But the dramatic muse, though not the least naked of the nine, is infinitely the most coy, and, in the present instance, she fairly repulsed her suitor-clever, very clever man though he be. The opera, founded as it was on the double prop of Les deux Philiberts and Joconde-the former a popular favourite, and the latter the very idol of the French world of taste, high living, and the private boxes-altogether failed in the easiest attributes of comic opera. Four pairs of lovers could not make it be loved. Liston, en beau, his favourite exhibition, was allowed to laugh by himself, and as for Vestris, Dowton, and id genus omne, they were, I presume, very well paid for what they did; and farther the deponents said not. Even Miss Stephens, the Stephens, flagged so disastrously, that she has, from the first night, altered her merciless resolution of single blessedness, and taken to thoughts of matrimony. She is a charming girl!

The Covent Garden pantomime has played Drury Lane, with all its monkery, out of the field. It is the ne plus ultra of traps and transformations. The living exhibitors, who undergo their annual bruisings and dislocations for the pleasure and benefit of John Bull, are altogether extinguish ed in the presence and concussion of those masses of machinery that make skies, pavilions, palaces, rivers, islands, and oceans, at the magic of Harlequin's wand. But the glory of the pantomime rests, like that of the opera just commemorated, upon two main props, a Skating Scene and the Passage to Paris by Gas. St James's Park, clothed in all the hocriness of winter, spreads before the astonished galleries. The stage, as far as telescope can pierce, is a sheet of ice, and a population of skaters. Luckily for the fates of this scene, the patent skate had been invented in the course of the year. It is a simple, but certainly a very complete and ingenious invention; henceforth climate is set at nought, and all the charm of sliding on the ice is to be enjoyed without the frosting of a whisker. We shall, before another month, hear of skating matches under the tropics, and of figures of eight cut by the Autocrat of the Ashantees. The patent skate allows of all the manœuvres which have given celebrity to the most illustrious among skaters; and that consummate VOL. XV.

æra of improvement in which the Irish Nimrod expected to go hunting upon his own tea-kettle, is worthily commenced by the exploit of skating by

one's own fire-side.

The Voyage a l'air to Paris is an ascent in a balloon from Vauxhall. As it amounts to the same thing whether we rise from the earth, or the earth sinks from us, the machinist has chosen, for reasons best known to himself, the latter mode. This facilis descensus then proceeds with matchless gravity. Trees, houses, churches, yea the great city itself, " like an unsubstantial pageant, dissolve," and the æronauts, after soaring through twilights, moonlights, and cloud, descend to the shouts of all Paris, and the wonder of the world.

The West India interests are preparing for a fierce campaign in Parliament. Wilberforce, bowed down with years, and probably wearied by the perils which his own rashness and the worldly ambition of his party have gathered round his cause, has long contemplated the resignation of the throne of Saintship. The Butterworths, Buxtons, and the rest of those opulent and bustling combiners of the good things of this world with those of the next, will have some trouble about settling the succession. Yet one thing is decided; old Wilberforce, like old Crib, is to retire from the ring, but the party are still to swear by him,-r -no other head is nominally to supply the place of this dexterous and ancient saint; he is still to be permitted to give hallowed breakfasts, and to weep at a public dinner. But Buxton, whose brewership unfortunately unfits him for the avowed lead among the council of the Saints, as it did Whitbread for a seat in the cabinet of the Whigs-pretty nearly as much Saints as the proud possessors of the title-will, in all likelihood, harangue himself into the public belief of his being the depository of the sceptre. I am sick of these things, and men. To see intrigue, worldliness, heartlessness, and the spirit of money-getting, in all its obscure and crooked ways, mingling with a cause that inscribes upon its banners, philanthropy, honour, and religion, is to me among the most odious of all the repulsive sights of society. Nothing can be clearer than that the West Indies is a subject above their handling,-that their crude, insolent, and ignorant mea2 C

sures can have no other result than ruin both to the white and the black population; yet will these men rush on, and for the sake of some ragged ambition hazard the massacre of their countrymen. If they do not foresee these consequences, they are blind, and to be treated with the contempt due to impudent imbecility; if they do, the sooner they are unmasked of their saintship the better. All men desire to see a free and civilized population in the colonies, but freedom to barbarians is only a privilege to ravage and murder.

The Westminster Review is henceforth to be called the Antediluvian Review. Its former titles of the Bentha mite and the Radical, have sunk away into this matchlessly appropriate cognomen. Its readers were, it must be owned, at first rather surprised at the obsoleteness of the several topics. But the secret has at length been suffered to transpire. As the purpose of the work is reform in all its branches, church and state, books and mankind; and as no reform is worth a straw which does not begin at the root, the Antediluvian Review has determined to begin at the beginning; but cautiously, and so as not to set the laughers against it all at once. Accordingly the first Number has treated of no subject much beyond fifty years of age; and has lucubrated on the Bullion Question, Public Education, Malthus, and the "first Numbers of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews." This is all as it should be. The present century is fairly excluded, and that is enough for a first Number. But the second is to be more antique, and fearless; and to contain articles on the character of Marlborough; on the Revolution of 1688; and, as a little additional developement, a detail of the War of the Roses. The work is then to be considered as having fairly declared itself, and it is thenceforth to wanton in the wilderness of the dark ages, to give a train of dissertations on the discovery of the pandects; the Bulls of Innocent III.; the controver sy of Duns Scotus; the private correspondence and familiar philosophy of St Dominic; the fall of the Gnostics; the rise of the Aristotelians, &c. How much farther this radical retrogression

may go, or whether, like Neptune's horses in the Iliad, the third bound may not exhaust the universe, must still be left in that curious repository of the undiscovered and the unintelligible, the breast of Jeremy Bentham.

Among the curious theatrical revivals of the day is that of Colman's last comedy, John Bull. It was first performed twenty years ago, and was signally popular. It is remarkable now, as almost the only successful revival of those comedies which once carried the critics with them resistlessly. The present revival is in some degree an evidence of the return of public feelings to the healthy tone of better times. The comedy was no doubt born amid times troubled enough, but its novelty was then the charm. The novelty has now given way to its powerful delineation of the English character, in its original and best aspects, its manly feeling, its unpresuming independence, and its untaught generosity.

Fawcett's Job Thornberry is as fine a performance, and almost as tragic a one, as any picture of passion on the stage. The contrast to this, in the fashionable fop, Shuffleton, heartless, gay, alert, and ready to circumvent every being within his reach, is vividly conceived; and it is but justice to its actor to say, that it was as vividly performed. The lightness, dexterity, and perpetual animation of Jones, are incomparable. Always pushing the humour of his character to its highest point; he is remarkable for the chasteness of his delineation; the character never touches upon the grotesque; the modesty of nature is always kept in view; and the highest comic de light is unalloyed by false taste, feebleness, or affectation. The peculiar distinctness of his delivery would make him, I think, one of the most effec tive and successful teachers of enunciation, emphasis, &c., to our public speakers, pulpit or parliamentary. This assistance has been often given by actors, Garrick, the late celebrated Kemble, and a crowd of others. Something of the kind, generally adopted by our public men, would relieve them of an infinity of that awkwardness which disfigures the best efforts of English oratory.

on her; but they had been at the other end of the court when I enter ed, and in the confusion had been thrust into the apartments nearest to where they stood.

8

I entered the house, and was received by an Eunuch, who was in special attendance on this lady, and had indeed been presented to her a short time before by the King. He was used to see doctors, particularly myself, who had attended in the family in which he was brought up. He accordingly arose when I entered, and requested me to sit down, and take a cup of coffee and a kaleoon. I did as he bid me, and when I had taken one kaleoon only, I got up, and excusing myself on account of the nature of my business, which admitted of no delay, requested permission to see my patient. The Eunuch, not knowing that the women slaves were all out, told me that the lady was in her room, and left me to find my way thither.

I went to her room alone-she was lying upon a bed a leep-her bedclothes were as white as snow. The large pillow, which supported her head and shoulders, was of scarlet brocade, the beautiful colour of which was mellowed by the covering of thin white muslin, which lay over it. She had that morning been at the bath, and her long, black, silky hair, yet scarcely dry, rolled down in rich clustering folds upon the bed-clothes. The morning was warm, and therefore, perhaps, it was that the sheet had been pushed down so as to uncover her bosom. Her left hand still holding her thin crape cheinise, which she had been too drowsy to put on, lay under her head. Her right arm, fair, round, and full, was stretched over the dark carpet beyond the bed. Her fingers were newly dyed with hennah, and a fan of brilliant Indian feathers, which had fallen from her hand as she fell asleep, was lying on the floor.

Perceiving that her face was turned from the door, I approached her more nearly. Her cheek was a little flushed, or it might have been a reflection from the pillow. Its youthful downy softness-the uncovered temple-the long, white, veinless neck,* without one line to break its smoothness-the swelling shoulder beaming from be

tween the dark thick locks of her hair

her virgin bosom, half girl half woman-her fine form, scarcely concealed by the thin sheet which covered it, and which seemed to take a pleasure in clinging closely to every turn of her limbs-all this, and ten thousand other beauties, rivetted me to the spot. I gazed and gazed, and scarcely dared to draw my breath-and strained my sight till my eyes grew dim. I might have remained I know not how long, had not one of the slave girls returned, and fearing that she might come to her lady's apartment, I went back to the outer hall, told them that the sick person was asleep, and cautioned them not to go into her room, nor disturb her till she called.

While I was standing in the outerchamber, my eye chanced to fall on a mirror, in which my own visage was reflected. When I saw my grey beard and deep wrinkles, I could not help being astonished to find myself so much agitated; but after fully considering the matter, I came to the conclusion, that in spite of these I must on the whole be an exceeding young man of my years.

Aga Jewah, since so well known for the beauty of his horses, purchased at large prices, and brought from all parts of Arabia and Toorkistan; also for the fleetness of his falcons, from which not even the eagle is safe; but still better known for the condescension which his majesty the King of Kings has the benignity to show towards him, was the Eunuch who was in attendance on my patient. Having, as I mentioned, been formerly acquainted with one another, (though he was then in an inferior situation,) be again requested me to sit down and take another kaleoon, saying, that perhaps his mistress might wake before we had finished, and that I should be saved another walk. I accordingly sat down, and Aga Jewah being an intelligent and conversable man, well read in poetry and religion, we had good deal of discussion, in which he shewed his modesty as well as his judgment, by paying a becoming deference to my superior learning. We agreed that he should commence the study of physic under my tuition. "I promise you, Aga," said I, "that if you become