I thank you for the receipts; they are as full and particular as one could wish-but can easily be practised only in America, no Bayberry wax nor any Brassiletto being here to be had, at least to my knowledge. I am glad however that those useful arts that have been so long in our family, are now put down in writing. Some future branch my be the better for it.-It gives me pleasure that those little things sent by Jonathan proved agreeable to you. I write now to Cousin Williams to press the payment of the bond: there has been forbearance enough on my part, seven years or more without receiving any principal or interest. It seems as if the Debtor was like a whimsical man in Pennsylvania of whom it was said that it being against his Principle to pay Interest and against his interest to pay the Principal he paid neither one nor t'other. I doubt you have taken too old a pair of Glasses, being tempted by their magnifying greatly. But people in chusing should only aim at remedying the defect. The glasses that enable them to see as well at the same distance they used to hold their book or work while their eyes were good are those they should chuse, not such as make them see better, for such contribute to hasten the time when still older glasses will be necessary. All who have seen my grandson agree with you, in their accounts of his being an uncommonly fine boy, which brings often afresh to my mind the idea of my son Franky tho' now dead 36 years, whom I have seldom since seen equalled in every thing and whom to this day I cannot think of without a sigh-Mr. Bache is here. I found him at Preston in Lancashire with his mother and sisters, very agreeable people and I brought him to London with me. I very much like his behaviour. He returns in the next ship to Philadelphia. The gentleman who brought your last letter, Mr. Fox, staid but a few minutes with me, and has not since called as I desired him to do. I shall endeavour to get the arms you desire for Cousin Coffin; Having now many letters to write, I can now only add my love to cousin Jenny and that Sally Franklin presents her duty; Mrs. Stephenson desires to be affectionately remembered. I am as ever your affectionate brother B. FRANKLIN. P. S. No arms of The Folgers are to be found in the Herald's office. I am persuaded it was originally a Flemish family which eame over with many others from that country in Qu. Elizabeth's time flying from the persecution then raging there. NOTES. Dr. Franklin had three children, of whom the eldest Francis Folger Franklin died in childhood, his second son William was the Governor of New Jersey and sided with the crown in the revolutionary contest; his only daughter Sarah, was married to Mr. Richard Bache mentioned above, whose children and grand children now reside in Philadelphia. Cousin Josiah mentioned in the first letter was Dr. Franklin's nephew, a son of his favourite sister Jane to whom the last of the above letters is addressed. [London Mag. SELECTED FOR THE MUSEUM. IMPERFECT DRAMATIC ILLUSIONS. A PLAY is said to be well or ill acted in proportion to the scenical illusion produced. Whether such illusion can in any case be perfect, is not the question. The nearest approach to it, we are told, is, when the actor appears wholly unconscious of the presence of spectators. In tragedy-in all which is to affect the feelings-this undivided attention to his stage business, seems indispensable. Yet it is, in fact, dispensed with every day by our cleverest tragedians; and, while these references to an audience, in the shape of rant or sentiment, are not too frequent or palpable, a sufficient quantity of illusion for the purposes of dramatic interest may be said to be produced in spite of them. But, tragedy apart, it may be inquired whether in certain characters in comedy, especially those which are a little extravagant, or which involve some notion repugnant to the moral sense, it is not a proof of the highest skill in the comedian when, without absolutely appealing to an audience, he keeps up a tacit understanding with them; and makes them, unconsciously to themselves, a party in the scene, The utmost nicety is required in the mode of doing this; but we speak only of the great artists in the profession. The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another is, perhaps, cowardice. To see a coward done to the life upon a stage would produce any thing but mirth. Yet we most of us remember Jack Bannister's cowards. Could any thing be more agreeable, more pleasant? We loved the rogues. How was this effected but by the exquisite art of the actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us the spectators, even in the extremity of the shaking fit, that he was not half such a coward as we took him for?-We saw all the common symptoms of the malady upon him; the quivering lip, the cowering knees, the teeth chattering; and could have sworn "that man was frightened." But we forgot all the while-or kept it almost a secret to ourselves-that he never once lost his self-possession; that he let out by a thousand droll looks and gestures--meant at us, and not at all supposed to be visible to his fellows in the scene, that his confidence in his own resources had never once deserted him. Was this a genuine picture of a coward? or not rather a likeness, which the clever artist contrived to palm upon us instead of an original; while we secretly connived at the delusion for the purpose of greater pleasure, than a more genuine counterfeiting of the imbecility, helplessness, and utter self-desertion, which we know to be concomitants of cowardice in real life, could have given us? Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so endurable on the stage, but because the skilful actor by a sort of sub-reference, rather than direct appeal to us, disarms the character of a great deal of its odiousness, by seeming to engage our compassion for the insecure tenure by which he holds his money bags and parchments? By this subtle vent half of the hatefulness of the character-the selfcloseness with which in real life it coils itself up from the sympathies of men-evaporates. The miser becomes sympathetic; i. e. is no genuine miser. Here again a diverting likeness is substituted for a very disagreeable reality. Spleen, irritability-the pitiable infirmities of old men, which produce only pain to behold in the realities, counterfeited upon a stage, divert not altogether for the comic appendages to them, but in part from an inner conviction that they are being acted before us; that a likeness only is going on, and not the thing itself. They please by being done under the life, or beside it; not to the life. When Gatty acts an old man, is he angry indeed? or only a pleasant counterfeit, just enough of a likeness to recognise, without pressing upon us the uneasy sense of reality? The Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too natural. It was the case with a late actor. Nothing could be more earnest or true than the manner of Mr. Emery; this told excellently in his Tyke, and characters of a tragic cast. But when he carried the same rigid exclusiveness of attention to the stage business, and wilful blindness and oblivion of every thing before the curtain into his comedy, it produced a harsh and dissonant effect. He was out of keeping with the rest of the Persona Dramatis. There was as little link between him and them as betwixt himself and the audience. He was a third estate, dry, repulsive, and unsocial to all. Individually considered, his execution was masterly. But comedy is not this unbending thing; for this reason, that the same degree of credibility is not required of it as to serious scenes. degrees of credibility demanded to the two things may be illustrated by the different sort of truth which we expect when a man tells us a mournful or a merry story. If we suspect the former of falsehood in any one tittle, we reject it altogether. Our tears refuse to flow at a suspected imposition. But the teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth. 'Tis the same with dramatic illusion. We confess we love in comedy to see an audience naturalized behind the scenes, taken in into the interest of the drama, welcomed as bystanders however. There is something ungracious in a comic actor holding himself aloof from all participation or concern with those who are come to be diverted by him. Macbeth must see the dagger, and no ear but his own be told of it; but an old fool in farce may think he sees something, and by conscious words and looks express it, as plainly as he can speak, to pit, box, and gallery. When an impertinent in tragedy, an Osric for instance, breaks in upon the serious passions of the scene, we approve of the contempt with which he is treated. But when the pleasant impertinent of comedy, in a piece purely meant to give delight, raise mirth out of whimsical perplexities, worries the studious ith taking up his leisure, or making his house his home, the same sort of contempt expressed (however natural) would destroy the balance of delight in the spectators. To make the intrusion comic, the actor who plays the annoyed man must a little desert nature; he must, in short, be thinking of the audience, and express only so much dissatisfaction and peevishness as is consistent with the pleasure of comedy. In other words, his perplexity must seem half put on. If he repel the intruder with the sober set face of a man in earnest, and more especially if he deliver his expostulations in a tone, which in the world must necessarily provoke a duel: his real-life manner will destroy the whimsical and purely dramatic existence of the other character (which, to render it comic demands an antagonist comicality on the part of the character opposed to it), and convert what was meant for mirth, rather than belief, into a downright piece of impertinence indeed, which would raise no diversion in us, but rather stir pain, to see inflicted in earnest upon any worthy person. A very judicious aetor (in most of his parts) seems to have fallen into an error of this sort in his playing with Mr. Wrench in the farce of Free and Easy. Many instances would be tedious; these may suffice to show that comic acting at least does not always demand from the performer that strict abstraction from all reference to an audience, which is exacted of it; but that in some cases a sort of compromise may take place, and all the purposes of dramatic delight be attained by a judicious understanding, not too openly announced, between the ladies and gentlemen-on both sides of the curtain. London Magazine.] ELIA SELECTED FOR THE MUSEUM. BAR ORATORY. THE feeble growth or total absence of eloquence, before Lord Erskine, is a standing contumely against the English Bar. But however common-place the reproach, there is something curiously anomalous in the fact. Civil liberty is not alone the noblest object, but the true source of legitimate eloquence. Yet France, with her absolute monarchy and corresponding institutions, produced respectable if not accomplished models of oratory in her courts, when England, with a free constitution and the most popular of tribunals, had not one advocate penetrated with the sacredness, or conscious of the dignity of his calling. This penury at the Bar contrasts still more curiously with the redundant eloquence of English poetry and prose. Hume has suggested as a cause, that the study of our law requires the drudgery of a whole life; that its genius is intolerant, if not incapable, of eloquence. But French jurisprudence, somewhat less technical, was quite as laborious-embracing the learning of text-books and commentators, criminalists and civilians, to a vast extent. The ex ample of France, therefore, refuted Hume's suggestion, even when he wrote. That of Lord Erskine, with some exceptions still nearer, deprives it of all colour at the present day. Successful practice at the Bar is compatible, perhaps even congenial, not with eloquence alone, but with liberal attainments and the highest range of knowledge, in public business, literature and science. This position, half a century ago, would scarce have been admitted to the dignity of paradox, or the honours of refutation. There is now no, truth more conspicuously proved by living example. But whence the singular phenomenon of a long and seemingly hopeless barrenness of oratory in our courts? Probably no single cause produced or can account for it. One seems to be that the sphere of oratory at the English Bar was greatly, and is still considerably, circumscribed. Up to the 7th William III. the law disallowed full defence by counsel, at least the judges did, in felony and treason; and it continues to be withheld in felonies even now. No such restriction ever existed in France. There the advocate escorted the accused through every stage and every step of the trial, upon the facts and circumstances as well as the law of the case. But the chief and blighting influence in England appears to have been the tyranny and insolence with which the judges and crown-lawyers abused justice and enslaved the Bar, on the one side -the corrupt and quailing spirit of the Bar itself, on the other. The name of Lord Bacon is justly held the pride and glory of his country; but it were well for his country and his fame that he had never been chancellor, law-officer, or lawyer; this, without reference to the trite subject-matter of his impeachment and disgrace. The sagacious spirit, rich imagination, and nervous style of Bacon, must be sought elsewhere than in his pleadings and judgments; or, if any traits be discerned, they are subordinate and rare. The disastrous servility and sordid ambition of this great man are truly mournful. He not only prostituted his conscience, but sacrificed his taste, in pure sycophancy to the pedant king. His reasoning power, in the philosopher supreme, degenerates with the lawyer to curious sophistry-his wit and learning to quaint pedantry and puerile allusion-his court panegyrics to flatteries and conceits. Witness the arguments in support of imposts by prerogative, against the privileges of habeas corpus and bail; his speeches in the Starchamber against law, liberty, and reason; and his various personal addresses and allusions to the sovereign. Presenting a petition of grievances, unwillingly, as organ of the House of Commons, to the Harlequin-Solomon on the throne, he says, "Only this, excellent sovereign, let not the sound of grievances, though it be sad, harsh to your princely ear. It is but gemitus columbæ-the mourning of a dove, &c." One of the pleadings least unworthy of him is his charge in the Star-chamber on the duelling case. But even here, though untrammelled by politics, he volunteers a servile homage to the insolence of aristocracy and power. The offenders, it should be observed, were not of the higher orders. "It is not," seem |