tress, whom he selects as a matter of course from the beauties of the present and not from those of the last age! We think there is for this reason less pedantry and affectation (though not less party-feeling and personal prejudice) in judging of the stage than of most other subjects; and we feel a sort of theoretical, as well as instinctive predilection for the faces of play-going people, as among the most sociable, gossipping, good-natured, and humane members of society. In this point of view as well as in others, the stage is a test and school of humanity. We do not much like any person or persons who do not like plays; and for this reason,viz. that we imagine they cannot much like themselves or any one else. The really humane man (except in cases of unaccountable prejudices, which we do not think the most likely means to increase or preserve the natural amiableness of his disposition) is prone to the study of humanity. Omnes boni et liberales HUMATINITIA semper fuvemus. He likes to see it brought home from the universality of precepts and general terms, to the reality of persons, of tones, and actions; and to have it raised from the grossness and familiarity of sense, to the lofty but striking platform of the imagination, He likes to see the face of man with the veil of time torn from it, and to feel the pulse of nature beating in all times and places alike. The smile of good humoured surprise at folly, the tear of pity at misfortune, do not misbecome the face of man or woman. It is something delightful and instructive, to have seen Coriolanus or King John in the habiliments of Mr. Kemble, to have shaken hands almost with Othello in the person of Mr. Kean, to have cowered before the spirit of Lady Macbeth in the glance of Mrs. Siddons. The stage at once gives a body to our thoughts, and refinement and expansion to our sensible impressions. It has not the pride and remoteness of abstract science: it has not the petty egotism of vulgar life. It is particularly wanted in great cities (where it of course flourishes most) to take off from the dissatisfaction and ennui, that creep over our own pursuits from the indifference or contempt thrown upon them by others; and at the same time to reconcile our numberless discordant incommensurable feelings and interests together, by giving us an immediate and common topic to engage our attention, and to rally as round the standard of our common humanity. We never hate a face that we have seen in the pit. The only drawback on the felicity and triumphant self-complacency of a play-goer's life, arises from the shortness of life itself. We miss the favourites, not of another age, but of our own the idols of our youthful enthusiasm ; and we cannot replace them by others. It does not shew that these are worse, because they are different from those: though they had been better, they would not have been so good to us. It is the penalty of our nature, from Adam downwards: so Milton makes our first ancestor exclaim, "Should God create Another Eve, and I another rib afford, We offer our best affections, our highest aspirations after the good and beautiful, on the altar of youth it is well if, in our after-age, we can sometimes rekindle the almost extinguished flame, and inhale its dying fragrance like the breath of incense, of sweet-smelling flowers and gums, to detain the spirit of life, the ethereal guest, a little longer in its frail abode to cheer and sooth it with the pleasures of memory, not with those of hope. While we can do this, life is worth living for: when we can do it no longer, its spring will soon go down, and we had better not be!Who shall give us Mrs. Siddons again, but in a waking dream, a beatific vision of past years, crowned with other hopes and other feelings, whose pomp is also faded, and their glory and their power gone! Who shall in our time (or can ever to the eye of fancy) fill the stage, like her, with the dignity of their persons, and the emanations of their minds? Or who shall sit majestic in the throne of tragedy-a Goddess, a prophetess and a Muse-from which the lightning of her eye flashed o'er the mind, startling its inmost thoughts-and the thunder of her voice circled through the labouring breast, rousing deep and scarce known feelings from their slumber? Who shall stalk over the stage of horrors, its presiding genius, or "play the hostess," at the banqueting scene of murder? Who shall walk in sleepless ecstacy of soul, and haunt the mind's eye ever after, with the dread pageantry of suffering and of guilt? Who shall make tragedy once more stand with its feet upon the earth, and with its head raised above the skies, weeping tears and blood? That loss is not to be repaired. While the stage lasts, there will never be another Mrs. Siddons ! Tragedy seemed to set with her; and the rest are but blazing comets or fiery exhalations. It is pride and happiness enough for us to have lived at the same time with her, and one person more! But enough on this subject. Those feelings that we are most anxious to do justice to, are those to which it is impossible we ever should ! * From the favourite actors of a few years back, we turn to those of the present day and we shall speak of them, not with grudging or stinted praise. The first of these in tragedy is Mr. Kean. To show that we do not conceive that tragedy regularly declines in every successive generation, we shall say, that we do not think there has been in our remembrance any tragic performer (with the exception of Mrs. Siddons) equal to Mr. Kean. Nor, except in voice and person, and the conscious ease and dignity naturally resulting from those advantages, do we know that even Mrs. Siddons was greater. In truth of nature and force of passion, in discrimination and originality, we see no inferiority to any one on the part of Mr. Kean: but there is an insignificance of figure, and a hoarseness of voice, that necessarily vulgarise, or diminish our idea of the characters he plays and perhaps to this may be added, a want of a certain correspondent elevation and magnitude of thought, of which Mrs. Siddons's noble form seem ed to be only the natural mould and receptacle. Her nature seemed always above the circumstances with which she had to struggle: her soul to be greater than the passion labouring in her breast. Grandeur was the cradle in which her genius was rocked for her to be, was to be sublime! she did the greatest things with child-like ease: her powers seemed never tasked to the utmost, and always as if she had inexhaustible resources still in reserve. The least word she uttered seemed to float to the end of the stage: the least motion of her hand seemed to command awe and obedience. Mr. Kean is all effort, all violence, all extreme passion: he is possessed with a fury, a demon that leaves him no repose, no time for thought,or room for imagination. He perhaps screws himself up to as intense a degree of feeling as Mrs. Siddons, strikes home with as sure and as bard a blow as she did, but he does this by straining every nerve, and winding up every faculty to this single point alone: and as he does it by an effort himself, the spectator follows him by an effort also. Our sympathy in a manner ceases with the actual impression, and does not leave the same grand and permanent image of itself behind. The Othello furnishes almost the only exception to these remarks. The solemn and beautiful manner in which he pronounces the farewell soliloquy, is worth all gladiatorship and pantomime in the world. His Sir Giles is his most equal and energetic character: but it is too equal, too energetic from the beginning to the end. There is no reason that he should have the same eagerness, the same impetus at the commencement as at the close of his career he should not have the fierceness of the wild beast till he is goaded to madness by the hunters. Sir Giles Mompesson (supposed to be the original character) we dare say, took things more quietly, and only grew desperate with his fortunes. Cooke played the general casting of the character better in this respect but without the same fine breaks and turns of passion. Cooke indeed, compared to Kean, had only the slang and bravado of tragedy. Neither can we think Mr. Kemble equal to him, with all his study, his grace and classic dignity of form. He was the statue of perfect tragedy, not the livingsoul. Mrs. Siddons combined the advantage of form and other organic requisites, with nature and passion: Mr. Kemble has the external requisites, (at least of face and figure) without the internal workings of the soul: Mr. Kean has the last without the first, and, if we must make our election between the two, we think the vis tragica must take precedence of every thing else. Mr. Kean, in a word, appears to us a test, an experimentum crucis, to shew the triumph of genius over physical defects, of nature over art, of passion over affectation, and of originality over commonplace monotony. ANNALS OF PUBLIC JUSTICE. IL DUE GOBBI. From the European Magazine. truths she knows, and never fails to make mischief. Therefore she delights AFTER the splendid ceremony of all the ladies of the court, and whatev wedding the Adriatic sea, which the chief magistrate of Venice performs by going out in his state-barge and throwing a ring into the waves, a splendid banquet in his palace and general revelry throughout the city usually occupy the day. On one of these annual occasions, the Doge, having celebrated the allegorical ceremony expressive of his maritime authority, retired to a small supper-table with a few select friends to enjoy an entire release from official cares. And that it might be fully felt by his guests, he deputed his favourite Count Annibal Fiesco to perform the honours of the table, and sat himself among the entertained. The favourite, a nobleman of rich comic humour and grotesque person, compared himself to Sancho Panza in his court of Barataria, and the guests, seizing the licence of the moment, rallied him gaily on his likeness to that merry squire's exterior.--"Say at once," rejoined the Count," that you think me a tolerable Panache."-The Doge asked an explanation of this sally, and was answered, with great gravity, "Monsignor, the personage I mention is at this time of high importance at the court of France. She is humpbacked, wry-footed, squints prodigiously, takes snuff, scolds every body, and sits at all tables. One gives her a sweetmeat, another a box on the ear she mistakes the offender, tells all the er ought not to be told is said to be told by Madame Panache. One of these fair ladies was well received by the royal family of Sweden, but unluckily compared the queen to Madame Panache; and the consequence may be guessed, as the queen was an ugly woman." "Had she been an ugly man," said the Chamberlain, slily glancing at the favourite's deformed person, "the revenge would have been different. Instead of ruining the lady's husband, which probably gave her no great concern, I would have sentenced her to wear the hump, and bear the name of Madame Panache. But perhaps she had not wit enough to play a fool's part well." 66 Every wise man has not quite wit enough for that," interrupted the Doge, seeing some symptoms of Italian anger in his friends' faces; and casting a glance at the Count, he put on his scarlet cloak, and resumed his place at the head of the table with an air of mild authority which seemed to request forbearance. The favourite obeyed it with ready grace. "Your highness," said he, "shall see how easily a fool's part may be played. No man in this city is said to resemble me, except the cobler Antonio; and I will wager my best white horse, that in three days I will wear his clothes, handle his tools, and make his grimaces so well, that he 66 shall not be certain whether he is him- ly, and with the usual logic of a mob, self, or I am he. Nay, if your high- concluded him in the wrong, and joinness chooses to have this carnival of ed the impostor in driving him out of folly complete, I will bring him to con- the street. Antonio was a practical fess he is a dead man, and that I am philosopher, and instead of waiting for his ghost!"The Doge staked a hun- farther compliments from the victors, dred ducats on the experiment, and the went to the nearest officer of police and chamberlain joined in wishing the made his complaint. "This is all very Count success in the farce of Il Due ingenious," said the magistrate, laughGobbi. ing; but, my good little Annibal, every body knows the old cobler you pretend to be, and his ugliness is a hundred times more comical than your's. I have known the steeple on his shoulder ever since I was a boy, and wrote my lessons twenty years ago under the inspiration of his genius for lying-Go and add three pounds to that mound on your back, and make a better semicircle of your leg before you come to me again." An obscure shed, or what in England would be called a cobler's stall, was the abode in Venice of a celebrated person called Antonio Raffaelle-not the painter whose talents have excited so many imitators, but a little squareheaded humpbacked shoemaker, whose neighbours gave him this eminent surname in derision of his ridiculous ugliness and excessive vanity. Almost all the noted artists in Venice had taken this Æsop's likeness as an exercise for their skill in caricature, but with infinite delight to Antonio, who imagined himself a second Antinous. One night, after earning a few pieces of coin upon the quay, he returned to his cassino, and was surprised to see a squareheaded humpbacked dwarf seated by his wife's side, composedly eating macaroni and drinking lemonade. "In the name of St. Mark," said the high-spirited Italian cobler, "how comes such an illfavoured cisisbeo here in my absence, and how dares he stay when I come home?" 66 "Signor Gobbo," replied the dwarf, bowing with great civility and nonehalance, considering that you have thought fit to counterfeit my hump and my crooked leg, I make no answer to your comment on my ill looks; but I take leave to eat my own macaroni and sit at my own shopboard without offence to any gentleman." Antonio Raffaelle answered this ha rangue with a very scientific blow, which the new cobler returned with such speed, and such sufficient aid from the lady, that his opponent was forced to abandon his household hearth and fight outside. All the lazzaroni of the neighbourhood assembled to see the manual debate; and as poor Raffaelle was completely vanquished, very wise3F ATHENEUM VOL. 8. There was no enduring this taunt. Raffaelle ran in a fury of aggrieved honour to Signor Corregiano, an artist who had just finished a sketch of him, and implored his aid to identify an injured mau. "Ha, ha!" answered the Signor, uncovering his easel" that will be no difficult matter. His back serves me as the model of Vespasian's arch, and I shall send for him to-morrow to finish his profile-I want it for the Princess of Parma's museum-and here it is, except the nose, which I have not oker enough to finish. My wife's parrot mistook it for a cockatoo's beak, and pecked at it."-If Raffaelle was astonished at the insolent raillery of the painter, he was still more confounded when, in reply to his clamorous complaints, the Signor drily ordered his lacqueys to turn the impostor out of doors. "These rogues think," said the artist, taking a long whip and hestowing it liberally on his visitor, "that any dwarf may mimic our Raffaelle, but I would have them to know an ugly knave must be a clever one." Poor Antonio hardly knew how to believe his own ears, which had been so often feasted with praises of his fine bust and antique proportion. But one person might certainly be found to bear witness of his identity, and he ran like a tortoise in an ague to the confes “Ah, very true!" answered the priest, resting his hands gravely on his sides "what the neighbours tell you is nothing more than the precise truth, I owed him two maravedis for mending my shoes last night, but he had such an enormous bale of sins to confess, that I shall deduct the two maravedis as a penance." "-"What, holy father! will you not even pay me for my day's work?"—" Your's, lazzarone!-I employ for my cobler a dull roguish drone who has more ugliness than sop, and more tricks than all Æsop's birds and beasts; but his face i3 so strangely like St. Januarius's phial, that I verily believe it grows red by miracle, and therefore I patronize it." Not even Raffaelle's devout respect for the Catholic church could repress bis rage at this accumulation of outrages. He seized on the Dominican's ample sleeve, which being filled with Naples biscuits and Parmesan cheese, caused an unexpected shower of good things among the ragged groupe whose curiosity brought them to this scene. While the lazzaroni scrambled and the cobler talked, two or three soldiers of the Doge's guard laid their hands on him, and carried him to the nearest prison, accused by divers witnesses of profaning an ecclesiastic's person by assault. It was in vain to detail his wrongs, and plead the law of retaliation. The serjeant of the police preferred arguments of another kind, and after making as many indentures on his back as would have served for the plan of a tesselated pavement, the ministers of justice sent him forth to seek his home and property again. Of the latter part, as far as concerned his wife, he had some fears of finding more than was necessary, and could have dispen sed very well with any restoration of bis living stock. But when he entered the shop, woeful sight!-he beheld new furniture, a new name, a lady gaily dressed, and the pretended cobler sitting with a large assortment of shoes before him. The outrageous reproach. es of Antonio were more like the chattering of a sick ape than the articulations of human speech. He danced, grinned, shrieked, and threw his professional tools in all directions, but es pecially at the head of his faithless wife, who affected the utmost dismay and astonishment. Officers of justice were sent for again, the neighbours gathered together, the street resounded with shouts, and the Doge, whose carriage was passing through it, stopped to inquire into the cause. He was a man of mirth and good nature; the ridiculous distress of the two coblers caught bis fancy, and he ordered the matter to be brought to speedy trial. Antonio Raffaelle bustled through the croud, and called on the Doge to hear him speak on the spot. The state attendants of the equipage would have driven him off, but the Doge laughing heartily invited him to proceed. "Sire, your Excellency knows that merit of all kinds must have enemies, and the highest tree, as our proverb says, has the crows' nests in it. It is well known to your highness, that no pertrait. or statue in your gallery has been finished without a comparison with my figure, and this graceless usurper thinks he may rob me of my fame and my patrons because he has a high shoulder and a curved leg. I beseech your excellency only to command that he may meet me face to face in your councilroom three days hence, and your ten counsellors shall see which of us is the true Raffaelle." The Doge burst into a second fit of laughter. His Council of Ten, the most formal and formidable tribunal in Venice, engaged in the trial of two hunchback coblers, struck him as such ludicrous burlesque, that he determined to regale himself with a full surfeit of the comedy. "Well, Antonio!" said the merry chief magistrate, "collect your witnesses, and digest sufficient |