prevent the miserable victim from dying the most dreadful of deaths. Well might St. Paul say, ' Beware of dogs' (1st Epistle to the Philippians, chap. iii. ver. 2.')

"Semi-drowning in the sea is, we grant, a bad specific, and difficult to be administered. It is not possible to tell à priori how much drowning any particular patient can bear; what is mere semi-drowning to James is total drowning to John: Tom is easy of resuscitation; Bob will not stir a muscle for all the Humane Societies in the United Kingdom. To cut a pound of flesh from the rump of a fat dowager who turns sixteen stone is within the practical skill of the veriest bungler in the anatomy of the human frame; to scarify the fleshless spindle-shank of an antiquated spinstress who lives on a small annuity might be beyond the scalpel of an Abernethy ora Liston. A large blood-vessel, as the Doctor well remarks, is an awkward neighbour to the wound made by the bite of a mad dog when a new excision is to be attempted; but will any doctor living inform us how, in a thousand other cases besides hydrophobia, the miserable victim may always be prevented from dying?" There are probably more dogs in Britain than horses; yet a hundred men, women, and children are killed by kicks of sane horses for one by bites of insane dogs. British army, therefore, to be deprived of its left arm, the cavalry? Is there to be no flying artillery? What is to become of the horsemarines?"

Is the

The philosopher quoted in the last chapter, and spoken of at the beginning of this, shall not have the merit of standing forth as the original champion of Leggism. We denounce him as a base imitator-one of the servum pecus. He saw the fame that awaited our history, and he comes out with his dirty essay. Who cares fourpence for him or his opinions? Why did not he give us facts? why did not he take one of his friends by the hand, and, presenting him with a reverence, say, "Allow me to introduce Mr. Flathooker to your notice, a gentleman whose private worth is only excelled by his public virtue?" He is ready with his ipse dixits; he comes out glibly enough with his generalities; he can exclaim, "Turf morality, I am prepared distinctly to assert, surpasses the morality of any other;" but why does he not give us an example, a proof positive and clenching of his theory? Had he never the honour to meet T. O'Meara, Esq., or to sit in company with Captain Atkinson? Is not such a course likely to ruin the cause it would advocate? We eschew it, we denounce it, we utterly reprobate it; and in our desire to remedy the evil it is calculated to produce, request the reader's company as far as street. There in the bosom of domestic felicity; there, in the execution of his surpassing moralities, lives the hero of this history. We had better go in the first cab that plies, however; if one sends for such a convenience to one's own door, it is possible cabbee may know who one is, and where he has set one down. Never stand upon ceremony; come up at once, any friend of ours is welcome. There, Leatherlungs is speaking to his steward of the household. Yes, yes, we see-you do not particularly like the tone of his voice; never mind that, the sentiment makes the man. Listen! what's that he says

"You,

Jim Gammon, run over to the Bench with that 'ere case of champaign for Colonel Howard de Montmorenci; and tell the Colonel, if he's out to-morrow (his discharge will be lodged the first thing in the morning), that there's a broiled bone here after the French play I should think there's a little fifty or two hanging to that; and tell my brother if he comes here again and asks for a brass farthing, I'll find him a lodging in the stationhouse." Why do you recoil? are you unwilling to make the acquaintance of the Leg because he is an expounder of the economy of civilization? Is it come to this pass, that the educated classes must learn philosophy from a chamber-wench? that they are to be indebted to Mrs. Slipslop for a knowledge of the fact that people's ears are the nicest parts about them?"

Our theatrical managers have of late taken up with a practice more honoured in the breach than in the observance: it is one, indeed, altogether calculated to put play-houses out of repute. The custom we allude to is that of running the same subjects as dramas, pieces, farces, spectacles, or what not, at every individual house of entertainment, so that there is no more hope of a tolerable novelty at one of them, than there is expectation of variety of food in the breast of a Galway squatter. We perfectly understand the Pandora-like-box of difficulties the lessee of a theatre has uncovered for himself on opening a house, and are willing to admit extenuation for many of those

But,

modes of proceeding, which, though not agreeable ones to the habitués of dramatic performances, are, taken in a lump with their agrémens, just tolerated and tolerable, like the defects in our glorious constitution, only so long as we see no remedy for them. Managers, who at the close of their career write their memoirs, relate of "toils longer and harder" perhaps than those of most other classes encased in mortality-toils more difficult to wade through with honour and approbation than those of the Premier of England, and as difficult in the encounter as the disasters of an African exploration. granting so much, we see not the need that the public mind, every revolving season, should be circumscribed to a single idea, embodied, whether skilfully or unskilfully, in such a plot as that of "The Cricket on the Hearth," "A Christmas Carol," a "Don Cesar de Bazan," or any other dramatic entity or nonentity. Our managers' system is an unjust exaggeration of that usual in preparatory schools. In these, the unfortunate novices lament over one wearisome repetition-day in the week; but the frequenters of metropolitan theatres find repetition-day every day in the week, whichever house they betake themselves to. In the times of the legitimate drama, with names like Garrick and Siddons, O'Neil, Kean, and Kemble to support it, the public mind did not retrograde under this bad conventionalism; but in these, the dog-days of light literature, when authors, instead of elevating thought to its highest altitude, are content to swamp it in the dunghill puddle and the squalid cellar, it is a hard case to be reduced to everlasting versions of the dirtiest details of unwholesome life. What is the result? The play-houses, with almost a solitary exception, are spoken of with universal contempt, even by those whose habits render them averse to desert them; and a sense of weariness is almost the only sense entertained, undiminished, by the unlucky wight who goes through an evening's miscalled entertainment within their precincts. We have elsewhere expressed our humble opinion of the disservice done to the cause of humanity in general by those writers who first admitted to public inspection, as worthy compassion, admiration, and analysis, the virtues of vice in its lowest and most degraded form. The preserves of crime may be hunted by the legislator and the political economist with advantage to the human race; but we question whether even their morale is not soiled in the operation; while we have no doubt that the delicate daughters of Britain, of whatever estate, should be kept aloof from such investigations. Further than this. What is, or should be the main end of an author? Surely, to raise and not lower the scale of intellect, to endue the sons of labour with thoughts out of their daily reach, and with information not to be extracted from the Poor-law Union or the Newgate Calendar. A story of virtuous poverty is every where affecting, yet never so little effective as when represented dramatically. Here strong, and, for the most part, unreal contrasts of appalling vice, or disgusting imbecility are made use of, which subvert the moral effect expected to be obtained by such delineations. The habit of contemplating, begets a facility in the commission of, vice; and, unfortunately, the worst parts of our common nature are the most easily extended. We

have therefore, from its first French introduction, waged irreconcileable war with the whole tribe of domestic moralists and dramatists. We do not want the labouring classes, even on their festival days, to be plunged for ever in the contemplation of their own soulwearing poverty and mechanical existences; we would see them drawn out of themselves, and incited by some more intellectual ambition, by some more lofty range of thought than that habitual to them. So only shall the child yet in its mother's womb awake to that progressive life intended by our Creator.

We are still in the season of pantomine, we had almost said the harvest, but it would be a scurvy joke to liken its failure to that of the crops of the last year. The truth is, the christmas spectacles have not produced good fruit in any sense. People tell you, the present is not the age of fun; and, if they appeal for proof to the taste of the last summer and autumn, it would be hard to gainsay their assertion. The recent recreations in railways may be quoted as the worst joke current since the crowing of the Cock-lane ghost. But to our Pantomine. What constitutes one of these histrionic nondescripts? A Harlequin, in whom there is agility; a Columbine, in whom there is grace; a Clown, in whom there is humour; and a Pantaloon, in whom there is something. You look for such a combination in vain at any of the metropolitan theatres; indeed, one of the essentials is scarce to be found. The best of the ladies is at ASTLEY's; a young damsel who, at all events, has "lots of agility," and, as the Marchioness of- - said when she fell from her horse, shows it. More power to her hips! The fairy tales and extravaganzas have the best of the holiday spectacles. "The Bee and the Orange-tree at the HAYMARKET, and "Don Quixote" at the WESTMINSTER AMPHITHEATRE, are eminently the best. Mr. Hudson (the Orangetree of the former) is much the most agreable performer of his class now on the London boards He, in fact, is the beau ideal of that fascinating, rollicking rattle, which an Irishman either once was, or is said to have been. In his own words, when we see him, we inwardly exclaim, "Has your mother any more of you?" Oh Paddy, Paddy, down with the yowl of "Repeal," and up with the cry of "Vive la bagatelle!" and, as Denis Bulgruddery says to Dan the waiter, even so will we say to you-"Come to my arms, my darlint."

Let us, however, be regular in the order of our classification. The ST. JAMES'S THEATRE is the sole public rendezvous of the aristocracy. It has indeed " no pleasant blackguards like Tom Jones" (we omit the second line of the story as irrelevant), but dames and cavaliers, perfectly well bred and habited withal. Chief of the gentle portion of the dramatis persona is Madame Albert. Not so young, comme nous autres, as she was twenty summers ago; but, where is the Frenchwoman on whom time does not fall gently as a snow-flake? And, is it not a type of immortality that a human being should have lived through a quarter of a century's sentimental comedies in five acts without becoming a second edition of the Witch of Endor? Another feature has been added to the attractions of this house, in the person of a Monsieur Laferrière,

an actor of great general merit. But neither this lady nor that gentleman constitute the staple of Mr. Mitchell's magnetic powers. The secret of his success is the mise en scene of his entertainments on the stage and in the theatre. Do you suppose, could he assemble at one moment before the foot-lights, the ghosts of Roscius, Garrick, Kemble, and Kean, he could induce a podagrous peer to cross the threshhold of his dress-circle with the chance of a Whitechapel butcher consulting his ease upon a big toe, puffed up with an ancestral gout derived in a direct line from William the Conqueror? The wellbred manager of St. James's knows his business better.

DRURY LANE continues to play the double, proximus sed intervallo to the Italian Opera. It has its singing pieces and its dancing pieces--we protest to Apollo and Terpsichore we mean no irreverent allusion. This, however, we will say, that by providing attractive articles of the sort, Mr. Bunn did good service to old Drury; while by neglecting that precaution, his fellow-caterer for the public, Mr. Macready, blighted the harvests of Covent Garden.

We have already spoken of the HAYMARKET in reference to its burlesque. In the serious business of the drama, Miss Cushman and her sister have been reviving the furore which more than once atended the representation of Shakespere's sweetest poem, "Romeo and Juliet." The two greatest occasions of its success are stated to have been when the love-sick heir of the Montagues was played by Garrick and by Woodward. Of the former it was said " you can imagine him about to leap into the balcony to his mistress;" of the latter, "that the lady was most likely to jump from the balcony into his arms." We leave the susceptible reader to imagine which of these styles (if either) is most likely to distinguish a performance in which the lady and her lover are enacted by two sisters. Mr. Webster's other house, the ADELPHI, has been pursuing its usual course of success. We cannot say more for the fortunes of that spirited manager's enterprise.

The LYCEUM is great in its grostesque. We do not by this mean any allusion to the "Cricket on the Hearth," which is absurd enough for any social picture of low life in the 19th century; but to its presentment of honest humbuggery. Mr. Keeley's Downy Bird is a great fact of foolery. At the PRINCESS's, to the usual allowance of drama and ballet of action, has been added a battle of action, in which Miss Grant has recovered damages against the manager for his lack of courtesy-"O! si sic omnino." As usual, the best of the trans-Thamic minors (barring Astley's-of which a long word next month) is the SURREY. Of all the theatres of the metropolis, it's the place, "to hold the mirror up to nature—” before the curtain, at all events. We cannot speak from personal knowledge of the ultra minors. This is the season, however, when John Bull makes it a practice to be merry, if not wise; therefore, no doubt they have had their overflowing benches. Who cares for their presentments? their audiences were delighted, and no mistake and "whats the odds, so long as you're happy?".