"Among other essential accomplishments in which the young Bhattee is expected to perfect himself by unremitting practice, the following may be mentioned as absolutely indispensable: he must acquire the art of bleating like a sheep, barking like a dog, crowing like a cock, braying like an ass, and, in like manner, of imitating all kinds of animals. He must also be able to throw himself, as occasion may require, into every kind of attitude, to crawl along, or lie as flat as possible, on the ground, to run like a goat or dog, to stand on his head with his legs extended widely, so as to appear in the dusk like the stump of a tree, &c., &c. With reference to the last-mentioned acquirement, I recollect to have heard a sentinel of the Fourth Bengal Cavalry tell his officer, that when he was on duty on a certain occasion, he heard something move about the head-ropes of his horses. On looking round, he saw what he supposed to be a large dog, which ran between his legs, and nearly upset him. The sentinel, however, had heard of the ability with which many of the natives could imitate different animals, and was not satisfied with this explanation, and the noise that had at first excited his attention. He still suspected that some roguery was on foot; and, the better to detect it, he placed himself behind what appeared to be the stump of a tree at a short distance from the spot on which he had been previously standing. On this supposed stump he hung his helmet; and, bent on the most attentive scrutiny, he placed his head between the two limbs of the stump, so as, unperceived, to command a direct view of the quarter from which the noise had originally proceeded. This, however, was too much for the thief (for such in reality was this pseudo tree-stump), who unable to restrain his laughter, and finding his situation somewhat critical, suddenly executed a somerset, upset the astonished soldier, and made clear off with his helmet."

Progress of Discovery on the more Northern Coasts of America. Edinburgh Cabinet Library, Vol. IX.

Messrs. Fraser Tytler, and James Wilson, have here compacted for us a delightful volume, equally interesting to young and old, learned and unlearned. The work is to be regarded as a sort of sequel to the Polar Seas and Regions before published; and describes the expeditions of the Cabots, the Contereal, Verazzano, Ulloa, Behring, Cooke and Clarke, Vancouver, &c., down to the recent undertakings of Franklin and Beechey. The information, though of course not new, possesses an intrinsic value in its present state, which, perhaps, it was without in the diffused verbosity of the original sources. It has been sifted and examined by the evidence of many witnesses, and therefore claims the attention of those who are anxious to have the naked truth. The narrative is, however, not destitute of the interest derivable from a lively and perspicuous style, and from the introduction of judicious anecdotes. The Sketches of Natural History, by Wilson, are truly delightful. As all the volumes of the Edinburgh Cabinet Library have been universally acknowledged to reflect the highest credit on the care and exertions of

The "Lady" has turned her residence in India to good account. She has gathered together a vast number of pearls, and has strung them with considerable taste and skill. Her chapter "Introductory" is the only chapter in the volumes to which our compliment may not apply. She had evidently contemplated a poem on India, and-like some silly persons who eat too much, rather than let a dish be "wasted"thought it expedient to force the said poem into her book, a very mistaken notion, and one that will terrify many a reader from cutting more than the first twenty leaves. We can promise them, however, that if they proceed they will be rewarded. Indian manners are portrayed with a brilliant fancy; but that fancy is grounded upon minute observation, much experience, and sound judgment. Several of the Tales are excellent, highly dramatic, and all illustrative of the most striking peculiarities of the East. Those who peruse the book for amusement will find ample recompense, and those who consult it for information will be rewarded with pleasure and profit.

Geraldine Hamilton; or, Self Guidance. A Tale. 2 vols.

This is a fashionable novel, and not only a fashionable novel. Its merit is not of a very high order, nor are its pretensions great; but it is well calculated to cheer and gladden one of the long and weary evenings that November is about to bring us. Several of the characters are ably and skilfully drawn: the heroine herself is a very agreeable personage-and those who cultivate her acquaintance will have no reason to regret the introduction. From the beginning to the end the story progresses pleasantly, the various persons of the drama act the parts "set down for them" in a creditable and respectable manner, and poetic justice is liberally awarded at the end. This is all we can say on behalf of "Geraldine Hamilton." It is not likely to satisfy the author, but it must satisfy our readers.

[We have received such of the various Annuals as are published. But as they have not yet all made their appearance, we postpone our notice until next month. We have another motive for this arrangement. The Annuals (which profess to be Christmas presents) have been issued to the public ridiculously early: they are in reality Autumn and not New Year's Gifts, and we imagine will shortly become Easter Offerings. This is a very foolish and injurious plan, and one which, if not altered, is likely to remove the class of works altogether from our literature.]

The two great houses have opened since our last, and both have, in their new arrangements and productions since their opening, shown a becoming degree of enterprise and spirit: two indispensable qualities for commanding success, but which, when standing wholly alone, (as they seem to do in the present cases,) command nothing but a more signal degree of failure than if they were absent. Laporte, in the audience part of his arrangements, has made three material alterations, all of which are improvements; he has converted the dark, stony corridor, adjoining to the dress-circle, into a light, warm, carpeted, and furnished apartment, into which it is quite a comfort to retire between the acts, or to lounge in before or after the performances, freed from the pollutions and blackguardisms of the saloons and lobbies. This excellent improvement is, however, sadly incomplete for want of an entire disconnection from the parts of the theatre just alluded to; the "company" appertaining to which occasionally lose their way into this part of the house, and there is nothing to remind them of their error, but their own" taste," or the "discretion" of the box-keepers ! Refreshments, cheap and of good quality, (as supplied by Jarrin at the King's Theatre,) is the only other desideratum to this portion of Laporte's new arrangements. The other two improvements that we have alluded to are, the arrangement of eight or ten centre boxes of the lower circle into stalls, and the introduction of a splendid chandelier. This latter, like the arrangement of the new saloon, is a half measure only, and, therefore, of little value. What was wanted was, to get rid of the numerous small chandeliers, which distract the eye, and thus greatly injure the coup d'œil; and, what is of much more importance, make the audience part of the house much too light, and thus remove or break up the attention from the stageperformances, and in so doing fritter away the habitual interest that would otherwise be excited by them. At present, the English people go to the theatre quite as much to see and be seen by the audience, as to witness the performances which are the ostensible cause of their coming; and where this is conspicuously the case there can be none of that real taste and earnest love for the drama on which the actual condition of that drama mainly depends. This is a secret that English managers will never discover or be taught, because they are as obstinate in clinging to their established errors, as they are ignorant of

all the principles on which their art and its attractions rest. We had hoped better things of Laporte; but all that we see teaches us to look for still further disappointments at his hands,-and, above all, in that department which includes the most important of his duties. For instance, though he began well by opening his theatre with two novelties, instead of following the established blunder of commencing with a piece literally chosen for its want of attraction,-yet conceive the principal of his opening novelties to be " new tragic actor," whose pretensions must make him the laughing-stock of every country barn that he is destined to enter! Yet such was the "Shylock" with which we were treated on the opening night of Covent Garden Theatre. The other opening novelty was not so bad, yet far from good; and it included the singular want of judgment of introducing Laporte himself

a

more

decidedly one of the most original and distinguished comic actors of his day-in a character so entirely below his merits, as to make its failure certain and its effect ridiculous. Laporte himself was among the best cards he had to play, had he known when and how to place it; but thus to fling it away on the first round, was the height of folly, and gives him all his work to do over again. "HIS FIRST CAMPAIGN" (the new piece produced at this theatre on the opening night) belongs to a very pleasant and attractive class of drama-that which takes one or historical anecdotes of some distinguished individual, and clothes them in a dramatic form, allying them to numerous collateral circumstances; and thus forming a whole, doubly attractive, from its moral, or intellectual, or picturesque interest, and its actual and historical truth. The French stage is constantly putting forth pleasant trifles of this kind, and His First Campaign" is either an imitation of them or an adaptation; probably the former, for our neighbours are not too apt to hold up to admiration our military heroes, however they may do by those of other nations. The hero of the present drama is the great Marlborough, and the incidents refer to

his first campaign," which was performed under Turenne and the Duke of Monmouth, both of whom are introduced, and the former with good and characteristic effect. But by far the best portion of the piece is the comic portion; which is easy, natural, lively, and sufficiently connected with the rest of the drama to form a strictly component part of it. The French Corporal, however, of Laporte, is (as we

have hinted) a total failure,-on the part of the author we mean, for no one else could have played it better, but twenty might have played it quite as well: a fact decisive of its total inadequacy to the talents of a first-rate artist like Laporte. The character of a little dandy drummer was capitally done by Miss Poole; and Mitchell (whom we are much pleased to see on the regular boards) played a sort of Irish Moll Flaggon with great truth and spirit. The piece was quite successful; but it is not among the most happy of Mr. Planche's productions. The second novelty produced at this theatre is even more signally indicative of a defective judgment somewhere in the management than the ridiculous failure of the Shylock of the opening night. It is among the miracles connected with the miraculous career of Shakspeare, that in an age when almost the only subjects and incidents, especially sought after by dramatic poets, were those belonging to a class which are now specially and most justly interdicted from the acted drama, Shakspeare adopted and treated one of those subjects only. In an age the characteristic of whose drama is, next to the surpassing beauty of its poetry, the hideous impurity of its subject-matter, Shakspeare alone, while he united in himself the beauties of all his contemporaries, is almost wholly free from their besetting sin. Generally speaking he is

re

"Pure as the thought of Purity;" and even his impurities have the spirit of purity within and about them, and are objectionable in form alone. One drama, however, he has given us, that while it is wholly exceptionable in point of subject, has little or nothing to recommend it in any one other particular; as would naturally happen when he was treating a subject that was no less alien to his poetical tastes than repugnant to his moral feelings and this is the drama, ("All's Well that End's Well,") which the management of Covent-garden have " vived," and foisted into it some of Shakspeare's own exquisite verses; married the latter to some paltry modern music; andworst of all-stuck into it (like a beautiful and sweet-scented flower stuck by a baby's hand upon a dirt-heap) a fragment from the loveliest and purest of all his other productions, the "MidsummerNight's Dream!" We shall abstain from criticising this act any further than to say, that the success of the experiment is just what it deserved to be. We must add, however, that it would have been more signal, but that the play was made the medium of bringing back to the stage our old favourite Jones, in the only cha

racter worth preservation in the pieceParolles. He played it, as he does everything else, with a wit, a brilliancy-a pure and masterly conception of character, which are as rare as they are amiable. His return to the theatre is like the return of the old and great Age of Actingas such we hail it!

The other and most conspicuous novelty at this theatre is a play founded on "Waverley," and brought forward in connexion with a Pageant or Masque, written by Sheridan Knowles, in comme moration of the genius of Sir Walter Scott. The play is agreeably written, and includes two or three comic scenes that are very amusing and effective; but as a drama it is deficient in that consecutive interest which is, after all, the leading feature of the original story and of all its illustrious fellows. The play of " Waverley" gives us indications, but no developments, of character; it gives us many detached scenes that are not ill-managed, but no union of those scenes into a consistent and coherent whole; but it has, in common with the novel itself, the merit of affording a stirring and graphic picture of the times in which its incidents occur; and what is, perhaps, best of all at the present moment, it vividly recalls those incidents to the memory, at a moment when they come back to it invested with a peculiar interest: for of all the novels by " the Author of Waverley," Waverley itself will ever remain the most popular, if only in virtue of the name which it bears,-and in bearing has made immortal. There is n acting in this piece to call for particular mention, unless it be that of Abbott, in the drinking scene at the Baron of Bradwardine's; which was capital.

no

The above piece was followed, on its first performance, by a Masque written by Sheridan Knowles, in honour of the genius and writings of Scott; but we are not able to say that it was worthy the genius of the great bard, or the talent of the mediocre one. It is sufficiently inartificial - commencing with a lament, by the writer himself in propriá persona, over the tomb of the illustrious dead, followed by a similar lament from the genii of Scotland, England, and Ireland, &c., and concluding by the calling up, at the bidding of Immortality, a series of Tableaux Vivans, representing some of the most remarkable scenes in the novels and poems. The recitation part of this representation labours under the singular mistake of being written in blank verse,-a perfect anomaly in allegorical composition, and one which totally destroys that lyrical and poetical effect, in the absence of which an allegory is an impertinence. In other respects, the

piece is well enough suited to its momentary purpose; but, we must repeat, it is wholly unworthy of its writer,-how much more so, then, of its subject!

DRURY-LANE has not been behind-hand with its rival in the production of novelties; and, upon the whole, they have been superior in pretensions to those of Coventgarden during the same period, but still prophetic of anything rather than the renovation of that national drama to which they vainly aspire to belong. The chief of them is a tragedy entitled "The House of Colberg." It is from the pen of Mr. Serle, whose" Merchant of London" gave promise of something more lofty and permanent than this, in some respects, meritorious production. As, however, this is not the place to offer remarks on anything but what is immediately before the public, we shall pass on to the next production of this Theatre-"The Factory Girl," -a piece whose name alone should be fatal to it, and its object still more so; for it is idle, and even injurious, to attempt to do good by wrong means. "The FactoryGirl" is like one of the late Rev. Mr. Plumptre's moral dramas-a sermon put into dialogue; and as Mr. Jerrold, its author, is a much cleverer man than the reverend writer of "The Butcher," "Mrs. Jordan and the Methodist," &c., while the moral lesson taught is not a whit more likely to take effect than in the cases just alluded to, the unconscious farce of the effect is nearly avoided; which we hold to be an evil rather than a good. "The Factory Girl" contains some pleasing writing, and some useful morality, (to say nothing of statistics, casuistry, political economy, &c.,) worse than thrown away upon a subject which no treatment can make entertaining, and which, therefore, no talent can make otherwise than an impertinence

we mean as a stage representation. Still we must in justice add, that the Play, such as it is, with its faults and its merits, more than ever convinces us that Mr. Jerrold may do something worth our hearty commendation, if he will but abandon the course he has so perversely adopted, against his own better judgement, and merely because it is one in which nobody else of any pretensions has preceded him; a quite sufficient proof at this time of day that the course is a wrong one.

The third novelty at this house is decidedly the best. Don Trueba's farce of "Mr. and Mrs. Pringle," is a lively and pleasant adaptation to English manners and society of a still more lively and pleasant French piece; the idea of which is simply that of an old bachelor marrying to secure a quiet life, and finding himself the undisputed head of a ready-made family, his lady not having thought it necessary to apprise him before-hand of her being the honoured parent of a blooming progeny. The despairing consternation, consequent on the successive advent of these blessings, is made highly amusing by the acting of Farren; but, like all his acting lately, it was too real-too like the actual thing; and, therefore, so far “from the purpose of playing." This is a piece, however, that will retain its place on the stage beyond the season of its birth-a rare distinction now-a-days.

The only other novelty at this the atre, is the pageant in honour of Scottwhich consists merely of a procession of the chief characters in his novels and poems-a conspicuous scene in each being set forth in dumb show, in the same manner, but even more inartificially, and therefore less effectively, than in the Masque of Sheridan Knowles. The best part of this exhibition is Stanfield's view of Abbotsford.

MODERN SCULPTURE.

It is not many years since, on the arrival in this country of the Elgin Marbles, whose introduction has deservedly immortalized the nobleman whose name they bear, and at the expressed determination of the Dukes of Bedford and Devonshire, the Marquis of Lansdown, Lord Egremont, and one or two other individuals distinguished for their refined taste and nobility of mind, to bestow a liberal portion of their attention and exertions to raise the drooping head of

sculpture in Great Britain, that the star of that majestic parent of art rose above the clouds of ignorance and prejudice. Since that fortunate period sculpture has been gradually progressing in the estimation of the many, and is becoming (if we dare to ennoble the expression by such an application)" the fashion of the day." Still much remains to be done ere we surpass our neighbours, or equal the ancients, in the practice of that art which infuses everlasting life and soul into a cold, insensible, and adamantine fragment-the

successful cultivation of which among any people places the stamp of perfection on their civilization, prosperity, and power. We have yet to overcome the almost insuperable obstacles unfavourable climate, mercantile habits, and economy of room in buildings, &c. &c., are continually presenting to its progress. We, therefore, hail with very sincere pleasure the publication of a work which tends so materially to forward the great cause of sculpture among our fellow-countrymen. Before we enter upon minute remark on the work in question, we shall, while upon the subject, endeavour to point out some of the numerous difficulties with which the sculptor has to contend in the prosecution of his art, more especially in England -difficulties which, though generally felt by the struggling artist, are little understood or appreciated by the public at large. We shall thence draw the inference that the present but partial advancement of the art is quite as much attributable to the innate difficulties in its pursuit as to the want of that thorough refinement in manners and taste so powerfully indicated by a high state of cultiva tion of sculpture, and explain the nature of the claims upon encouragement arising from those internal obstacles which seem exclusively to attend the prosecution of the noble art. While the painter may fairly consider himself possessed of all his principal necessary apparatus when he has acquired a moderately sized room with a high north light, a canvas, pallet, oils, colours, brushes, and mall-stick-all comparatively inexpensive and little liable to wear and tear-a sculptor, supposing him to have already toiled through his studies at the Royal Academy †, among his innumerable necessaries, must have much room, comprehending his "attelier," workshops, with ground-floors and yard, to hold his blocks, &c. He must have

Illustrations of Sculpture, edited by T. K.

Hervey.

+ Under the present arrangements at the Royal Academy, made, we conclude, when the study of sculpture was but little attended to in this country, the student in this art, in both the living and antique schools, is obliged to stand at a great distance from the object he is copying, behind all the draughtsmen, his work lighted by a candle merely, with but rare opportunities of approaching nearer the originals for the examination of their forms, so indispensable to the sculptor. We notice this inconvenience with the certainty that the members of that body whose works have established our present high station in fine art, will take advantage of the opportunity when afforded them by their new academy, to make more suitable arrangements for the study of art in this as well as other departments in their institution.

carving tools, drills, "pointing machines,” modelling stools, and "bankers," for marble work, and be at a continual expense for clay and plaster of Paris, for assistants and workmen of many kinds, from the fine carver down to the mason and stone-sawyer; he must have a capital, more or less, to invest in the purchase of rough blocks of statuary marble and other stone imported to this country from Italy or elsewhere, which, when he comes to open and work he may find, from the quantity of "colour" (veins and spots) within, is utterly useless; or, if he would avoid such risk by having the stone previously opened, he must purchase it at an advance of from one to four hundred per cent. Add to the above, the almost impossibility of getting his works into a situation fitted for their reception with regard to light, which, by its modern admission through low windows, is totally destructive of the proper and intended effect of his production. Thus any attempt

must fail to measure the feelings of a sculptor when, after many days and nights of toil to bestow a perfecting finish on some choice work, his anxiety for public notice and approbation, constrains him to condemn the cherished offspring of his warm imagination to the two or three months solitary confinement, yclept " Public Exhibition," in the gloomy dungeon which the Royal Academy has been unavoidably forced hitherto to appropriate for the reception of the productions of this hallowed and venerable art. We have thus shown that there are other causes than the want of the spread of matured taste for the present comparatively backward state of the divine art. Those to which we have adverted do not comprehend a tithe of a sculptor's drawbacks. We therefore think that Sculpture calls solemnly and loudly from beneath the weight of her oppressive difficulties, and has extraordinary claims upon the patriotism, and the prompt exertions in her favour of the great number, and we say it proudly, of individuals of both sexes, of science and taste in this and the sis

It may be as well to notice here that there exists much prejudice and injury to the professional practice of the sculptor of busts, owing to the erroneous idea generally entertained of the necessity for the sitter, previously to having a bust modelled, submitting to the operation of having the features covered over with plaster of Paris: this, we can assert, is by no means necessary or usual, except in post mortem likenesses, or when the whole head is taken for phrenological purposes; on the contrary, the sitter, not being forced to keep in one position, experiences less inconvenience than when having a portrait painted.