character of every one of them, our word of approval must be equally strong. It is embellishment of this kind that does assist the reader and the author, in coming to a good understanding with each other, while it tends to make a book useful in precisely the same proportion it does to make it elegant. The present age, we are well aware, is justly celebrated for productions of this class; still we consider we are offering small affront to the dignity of our own time in naming, as one of the very happiest examples of its progress, the united services of Messrs. Craven, Chapman, and Hall, now known through the Recreations in Shooting.

Charles Lamb preferred the glories of Cheapside to those of Windermere, and the soot of Fleet-street was to him more dearly odorous than the heather of the Cumberland hills. The studio of the artist is not redolent of violets, yet to him how much more of "incense-breathing odour" within its limits than within the horticultural district of Chiswick. The stable-bred helper especially affects damp straw, and relishes his pipe in the horse-parlour more than by the kitchen fire. Jack Tar masticates his quid of tobacco flavoured with "essence of pitch," and is to the matter born: the pouncet-bag and musk-rose atmosphere of a lady's toilette table were nauseous effluvia to him in the comparison. The actor does not forget the greenroom, though snugly retired in his suburban villa at Shepherd's Bush, but in every possible shape, animate or otherwise, surrounds himself with its mementos. Whence this fond predilection for the purlieus and precincts of long familiar occupations? Not, as we suspect, from any associations of the higher faculties; we cannot ascribe them, as does the elegant poet from whom we have borrowed our motto, to the intellectual pleasures of memory, but rather to the grosser instinct of habit we share in common with every order of creation that which is as prominent in the ant and the beaver, the

bee and the barnacle, the dog and the horse, as in man, "the intellectual lord of all." The perishable clings to the perishable even while the progress of life snatches the enjoyment of old customs from the grasp of the decaying mortal. In various centuries various habits characterize the epoch: the amusements of one age are seldom those of another. Our public entertainments as exhibited in our cosmopolite metropolis give us, in the nineteenth century, a prevalence of sound, show, and spectacle over sense, deep thought, and imaginative creation, quite remarkable in an age cited for the rapid diffusion of knowledge among every class. Is it not that this knowledge is all superficial-lip-deep, not thought-deep-that we have so few masterminds in any capacity? To bring our subject-matter immediately within grasp, we must look at our principal theatres. Shall we find in them the witty-farcical, the intellectual humorous of any other age of the drama? No; we are fain to content ourselves with a band, a ballet, or an opera. Shakespeare travestied into bombast here, French repartee at secondhand there; real results of studious genius met with nowhere. Our dramatic soil has worn barren and unfruitful, and therefore is it sown with weeds soporiferous, gay, and gaudy to the eye, but bearing no fruit. We must, however, content ourselves with feasts of the animal senses; we must see and hear where there is little or nothing to comprehend.

The French plays progress from good to better. Mademoiselle Albert has been great this past month, so has Laferrière. Cartigny is not to be despised in any of his roles; we wish we had a dozen of such general talent in our English houses. Mademoiselle Albert, as the litigious wife in L' Ecole des Femmes, exhibited a degree of acute perception of humour that we had not before observed in her. Mademoiselle St. Marc is still a favourite with all frequenters in this house; the lovers of the sentimental swear by her serious comedy, and in the style called the folle there is no one of like piquancy within our experience. We will not now particularize the pieces in which this clever young lady and M. Felix have been delighting the town and winning laurels for themselves, as well as also, we trust, fruit from that goldbearing tree of which Virgil sings with the true gusto of a poet; for of these we shall speak anon. We must not part with the French theatre without a word about its recent débutants—a party of gentlemen who call themselves Ethiopian serenaders, upon the lucus a non lucendo principle. In every sense of the term they are a set of sharp fellows; acute as tarnation sarpints, and as hatchet-faced as the Kemble family; not a snub or so much as a bottle-nose among them. They are five in number; the great gun being one Germon, who plays upon the tambourine with every bone in his body, and his head to boot, at the same time; and one Pell, who works a couple of thigh bones after the fashion of castanets, and takes leave of his senses the moment he hears them rattle. The gentleman who does the concertina has no fault but his uniform attention to decorum. The two banjo men are only saved from admiration by our recollection of poor Sweeney. As a whole, however, "such a getting up stairs we never did see.'

DRURY LANE THEATRE is getting quite attractive, now that Mr. Bunn does not pasture his flock altogether upon Balfe; besides the

opera of Mr. Wallace, that of "Don Quixote" (Mr. Macfarren's) has offered at least a show of permanent success. On the 13th of the month a new fairy ballet was produced-"The Island Nymph" by name; by nature not so easy to classify, seeing that its sea-nymphs are of the most terrestrial order. Scenery, getting-up, and dancing all very excellent. Mademoiselle Maria still maintains her popularity, in despite of the accession of a Spanish mademoiselle, whose power of muscle is considerable enough to have permitted her to figure successfully in the arena of Madrid as well as at the Grand Opera, from whence it is said she winged her flight. Mr. Allen's voice is, to ourself, the great treat of this theatre, without any disparagement to Mesdemoiselles Neódot, Maria, M. Desplaces, or any other of the professed votaries of Terpsichore. As Basilius, in “Don Quixote," he has taken his hearers by surprise.

Mr. Webster's pleasant house in the HAYMARKET continued to furnish the anomaly of two sisters playing the parts of mistress and lover very successfully. Miss Cushman, though an emphatic exaggerator of Macready's manner, is a feeling reader and enacter of several of the principal characters in Shakspeare's plays, and as such, is to be dealt with, with all due observance. We were glad, therefore, to observe that in her new part, Sergeant Talfourd's "Ion," she softened her declamatory vein to suit the gentle strength of purpose in the temple-bred boy, and subdued her impetuous style with most praiseworthy penetration of her author's creation. "The Old School" is vastly successful with every new comer in this wellmanaged house. Farren, as teacher of the waltz to Mrs. W. Clifford, is inimitable; and the lady's delicate astonishment at the freedom of gesture introduced by it is comically enacted. The pretty burlesque also still holds its place as the evening wind-up, and there are novelties of various kinds to please the tastes of all parties.

The PRINCESS'S THEATRE has been full to suffocation since the accession of Mr. Macready to its boards, as may well be supposed. When an actor presents so many eminent points of excellence for minute observation, it is well that the spectator need not lose one of them, even though the general effect of the acting is diminished by the limitedness of the space. Richelieu has been his most frequent character during the last month; one written, and calculated for him in every respect.

"The Crickets on the Hearths" are, thank our stars and double comets, dying a natural death of inanition. The LYCEUM bills give out a succession of new attempts; we are to have "Esmeralda," and what not shortly. That we have now is mainly supportable through Keeley's drollery and his little wife's vivacity.

The sayings and doings of the other theatres of the metropolis are all, however, of the milk-and-water order when put in the balance with the magnificent enterprizes of that of ASTLEY'S royal house. Mr. Batty thinks nothing of giving us his own version of the modern history of Europe, of the conquests of Napoleon-and Boney himself fac similied; of the achievements of the Duke, too, he has been not a little liberal; and wonders, from his horn of plenty, are continually dazzling the little folks, who alike delight and tremble at the snort of

his war-horses. He has conceived and executed a series of eastern plots and pictures more romantic than the "Arabian Nights Entertainments," more glowing than the sun of India itself, and quite as full of verisimilitude as the reader of Plutarch's Lives can desire. His last glorious attempt--the most successful, poetically just, and agreeable of all-is entitled "The Rajah of Nagpore; or, the Sacred Elephants of the Pagoda." That they are real elephants, hugely competent to sustain the dignity and weight of the business imposed upon them, may be easily conceived. Those who have recollection of the hour and the circumstance in which, more particularly, Madame Djeck fretted her hour upon the stage, will rejoice to hear that Mr. Batty's elephants are the discreetest of monstrous mammalia, wellbehaved, and well clad withal. Altogether, the most fastidious witness the whole economy of these performances not only without scruple, but with interest and pleasure. The gymnastics, à la Risley, at this house are first-rate, and the scenes in the circle quite worthy of the fame it earned in the hands of its late master.

The routine of performances at the lesser establishments have been pretty much the same since the commencement of the new year, in consequence such as we have already described them. The exhibitions, like other spring productions, begin to open fast; we shall have a whole bundle of them to botanise next month.

MONTHLY MISCELLANY.

RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE VETERINARY ART.-The early history of the art was obscure, and he believed that animal physiology and pathology were not practically understood by the ancients. The art was practised in ancient times very probably in the way it still remains in Asia, Africa, and some of our more distant colonies. Though the horse was so highly prized by the ancients, as not to be made a beast of burden for agricultural purposes, but employed chiefly in war, the chase, and equestrian contests, still there did not seem to exist professed veterinary surgeons, nor persons whose principal occupation related to the diseases of animals. We were told, however, that such persons did exist 4,000 years ago in China, but hitherto there were no means of knowing how they practised the art. Our recently established relations with China would supply the desideratum, and much useful information would be gathered from our commerce with the interior of that country. The Romans, no doubt, prized those who understood the diseases of domestic animals, and Virgil, who did to a certain extent, first attracted the notice of Augustus, by the attention he paid to that emperor's stables. There appeared to be no regular practitioner with respect to the diseases of man and animals before the time of Hippocrates, though persons practised as amateurs. With the decline of Roman and Greek litera

ture, all that was known of the veterinary art fell into decay, to be revived only with the revival of literature and the arts in the 15th and 16th centuries. There then appeared veterinary authors in Italy, Spain, and France, and not long after in England, amongst whom he would mention Lafosse, the Duke of Newcastle, Earl of Pembroke, Mr. S. Freeman, whose works, however, were not calculated for the student, but merely useful to matured practitioners. Little more was done until about eighty years ago, when France took the lead in advancing the veterinary art, by the establishment of schools first in the provinces, and in 1764 in Paris. Austria, Prussia, Hungary, Hanover, followed the example of France, and government schools were established in those countries. The institution in which he had the satisfaction to be now teaching the students owed its origin to the efforts of private persons, principally of Mr. Grenville Penn, Sir Arthur Young, Mr. Holmes Sumner, and Sir H. Bunbury. It had gradually become what it was, affording advantages to the student not to be found in foreign colleges, and sending forth hundreds of veterinary surgeons to practise not only in England, but in our colonies, and in countries not under our sway.From a lecture by Professor Sewell, before the students of the Royal Veterinary College.

STATE OF THE ODDS, &c.

A variety of circumstances, legitimate or otherwise, tend to make the annual acceptances for the Chester Cup above the average allowance accorded to races of such manufacture. In some peculiar points of view, this long list of the "left in " may not, perhaps, be considered a recommendation, though on general terms it must undoubtedly rank amongst the Cup's attractions. On this head, then, Chester appears to be keeping quite up to the spirit of the time, the greatest entry being followed by an acceptance proportionately promising-only a dirty half hundred struck out of the hundred and forty-two names sent in for measure by merit. From many of the long strings-Lord George, Wadlow, Hesseltine, and others having each a good lot to back and pick from, the starting post, we should hope, will not witness more than three or four sets, although the number already priced at the Corner would of themselves furnish something over a couple.

Amongst these we find as yet no particular pots or amazing secrets, the real worth and past performances of a horse having, indeed, a good share of that favour so often, in handicaps, bestowed on a faint heart, a poor power, and a light weight. In proof of this leaning to virtue's side, we need but call attention to the present first favourite being no other than the best horse of last year; while The Baron is supported at odds that bring him just as close upon the premier as their respective weights and deeds would regulate it. Further than this, the